Lecture on Hildegard of Bingen
(c) Ian Johnston, Malaspina University-College 
January 1996
                              

A. Introduction: Some Basic Observations on Language

At words poetic
I'm so pathetic
That I always have found it best
To let them rest
Unexpressed. . . . (Cole Porter)

Most of us are aware that we use language in different ways,
that what is appropriate for effective communication in one
situation is not in another.  This is not just a matter of
an appropriately decent or indecent vocabulary, but also a
matter of the emotional quality of the words we use, their
clarity (or ambiguity), and the extent to which we
communicate figuratively (i.e., with images, similes,
metaphors).

What this common awareness points to is that we use language
in different ways and that it is important for us to be
aware of how what we mean to communicate in a particular
situation shapes the language most appropriate to it.  An
incorrect choice of a language can defeat the requirements
of the situation.  What is an effective indication of one's
feelings in a romantic situation may not the best language
to use at work when you are called upon to provide an
accurate quantitative description of something.

B. Denotative and Connotative Language

One simple way to make this clear is to call attention to
two of the qualities of most words, their denotative
meanings and their connotative meanings.  When we talk about
a word's denotative meaning we are referring to its defined
meanings, the specific descriptive powers of that word upon
which our culture has agreed, its literal definition.  The
clearer the specific definition and the smaller the number
of such definitions, the less range there is for any
confusion in any communication.  Very clear words are those
with a single specific agreed upon meaning (e.g., metre,
gram, square, DOS); others have a range of possible denoted
meanings (e.g., set).  And over time the denotations can
change (e.g., presently, gay).  To find out what the denoted
meaning of a word is, should we be at all confused, we
consult a dictionary.  That is the arbiter of any disputes
about the denoted meanings of words.

The term connotations, however, refers to the ambiguous,
multilayered associations a word carries with it--a range of
emotional associations, sound values, cultural meaning.  A
word like rose, for example, has a denoted meaning (a
specific form of flower) but it also carries all sorts of
related meanings, some derived from our Christian past, some
from poetry, some from our personal experiences.  And this
range of connotative meaning will vary from culture to
culture.  The word rose is thus a far less clearly
demarcated word than something like, for example, volt, or,
put another way, its meaning is more ambiguous, more loaded.
In using it, we are evoking a response not just from the
reader's or listener's intelligent sense of the literal
meaning but also from the emotions that word and its
accompanying image provoke.

When we use a language with very clear denotation and a
minimum of connotations, we are relying upon a narrowly
defined agreed upon range of meanings, beyond which the
reader is not invited to stray, and our goal is accurate
description  When we use a language rich in connotations, we
are appealing to the reader's imagination to explore the
ambiguities and complex associations which the word brings
with it.  Our goal is to create an image or a metaphor to
convey as accurately as we can a state of feelings about a
particular matter.

Obviously there is no clear line obviously separating
denotative language from connotative language, but at the
extremes we can recognize a clear distinction.  Forms of
communication which want to keep at a firm distance any
sense of ambiguity or emotional involvement, which seek to
offer a disinterested description or argument, will rely
upon a language as empty of connotative meaning as possible.
For instance, we have all read sections of Euclid very
carefully.  The language of that enquiry is emphatically
denotative, with very clear and restricting definitions up
front, and with a minimum of ambiguity.  If there is
anything we do not understand about a statement in Euclid,
we can consult the list of definitions and the logical steps
which produced the statement.  How someone feels about the
result, or the rich emotional connotations of a conclusion
are not relevant.

At the other extreme, we recognize language charged with
connotative power to the highest degree and statements which
require us to respond to that range of emotional
associations in order to make sense.  For example, the
statement "My love is like a red, red rose" makes little
sense if we are unable to respond to the range of feelings
generated by the sound, the repetition and the connotations
of the word rose.  A truly literal reading would surely
leave us puzzled, for who would love anyone with thorns on
her legs?

Poetry obviously relies heavily upon the connotative powers
of words, since in writing poetry we are attempting to
create in language some symbolic equivalent of how we feel
so that we can communicate an accurate understanding of that
feeling.  We can do this well or badly, depending upon our
skill in using the connotative powers to create what T. S.
Eliot has called an objective correlative, a clear and
evocative verbal or visual picture which the reader or
listener can understand, can emotionally apprehend, so as to
grasp what we are communicating.1

[Note the important difference between language which is
merely expressive, like a cry of pain, and a poetic
creation, which establishes something that communicates an
understanding of the emotion.  The function of poetry (and
this we might want to dispute) is not to express emotion or
to produce in the reader the same emotion, but rather to
render the emotion in question emotionally intelligible, to
provide insight into the nature of that feeling.  The idea
of an objective correlative is a useful way to think of a
particular symbol, which does not necessary express emotion
directly--it is objective--but which renders it emotionally
intelligible.]

C. Plato, Hildegard and Dante

Now I want to use this distinction between language which is
primarily or exclusively denotative and language which is
rich in connotations to reflect a little further on the
reading we have done and will be doing and to clarify
somewhat our approach to Hildegard.

While, as I have observed, the distinction between these two
aspect of language is not always clear, we can say with some
justification that in our attempts to deal with the world,
to render it intelligible, we tend towards systems based on
denotative language or towards systems based on connotative
language; we move back and forth between, that is, a
language appropriate to mathematics (like Euclidean
geometry) and a language appropriate to poetry, between a
language appropriate to accurate description in precisely
defined terms and a language appropriate to emotional
clarity through the ambiguous powers of connotative
language.

In the Republic Plato refers to what he calls the old war
between poetry and philosophy.  One way to understand this
issue is to see it as a war between different types of
language.  If we wish to arrive at some insight into the
truth of the world, which form of language is the more
appropriate: a language characterized by a shared and
defined and restricted clarity of denotation or a language
characterized by rich ambiguous metaphors?

In recent times we call this distinction the difference
between a language appropriate to science, which seeks to
describe the world with the utmost precision in terms of
precise and narrow definitions, equations, numbers, and
formulas and a language appropriate to poetry, which seeks
to create a new symbolic emotionally intelligible
revelation.  And a familiar experience to many of you should
be the way in which so much of first year science, and
especially social science, involves an introduction to a new
language appropriate to that discipline.  This language
typically requires the student to describe and understand
things, often very familiar experiences, in a new language
as empty of connotative meanings as possible (e.g., the
vocabulary with which the social sciences describe family
relationships).

In fact, more than one person has proposed that the way we
recognize a science as opposed to a subject which belongs in
the Humanities is to examine the nature of the language
considered fundamental to thinking in that discipline.  If
the emphasis is, even in part, on the emotional powers of
language, on its connotative potential, then the discipline
belongs in the Humanities.  If by contrast the emphasis is
on a language purged as much as possible of all emotional
ambiguities and value laden terms, then that discipline
belongs on the science side of the line.  The discipline
which is at the centre of many of the disputes is that of
the modern study of History, which often claims to belong to
the social sciences but which still uses a language loaded
with colloquially ambiguous terms.

Now, this distinction is a problem for us because in a sense
we have to choose which language is the more appropriate.
In our age they are not easily combined.  We have learned to
distrust metaphors (for reasons I'll get into in a moment);
at the same time we often feel rather alienated by the cool,
disinterested and generally incomprehensible world of modern
science.  Often people follow their natural tendencies: some
prefer logically clear descriptions as their guide to the
truth; other prefer the more ambiguous but emotionally more
appealing world of the creative metaphor.  We see that
distinction in Liberal Studies students and instructors (in
their preference for poetry over rational argument or vice
versa) and, on a much wider scale, in the population at
large in their preference for "creationist" accounts of the
world's origins (which carry important connotations in the
imagery) over scientific accounts (or vice versa).  And
those who prefer one form of language are often deeply
distrustful of the other.

The distinction between these two forms of language, which
points to important differences in the way people perceive
the world, is well caught in a famous remark by William
Blake:

     I assert for My self that I do not behold the Outward
     Creation & that to me it is hindrance & not Action; it
     is as the Dirt upon my feet, No part of Me.  "What," it
     will be Questioned, "When the Sun rises, do you not see
     a round Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea?"  O no no,
     I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host
     crying "Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty."

What Blake is insisting upon here is the way in which he
apprehends the world metaphorically.  His experience of the
sun he communicates with a created image of enormous
emotional power, and he contrasts that with the much more
denotatively precise image used by ordinary people (a
language closer to mathematics).

But we have seen that these two uses of language are not
necessarily antagonistic.  Plato, it is clear from the
selections we have read, is very keen on the denotative
clarity of mathematics and is prepared to use it to make an
important point about knowledge (e.g., in the treatment of
the slave boy in the Meno).  At the same time, Plato slips
easily into metaphor to amplify a point or illustrate a
difficult piece of his doctrine (e.g., the Allegory of the
Cave, the Myth of Er).  Much of our enjoyment of reading
Plato, I would maintain, comes from the emotional power of
his language in these passages, the way he communicates
through Socrates' loaded metaphors what a passionate love of
the truth amounts to.

For all his use of memorable metaphors, however, Plato is in
places deeply suspicious of metaphorical language; its
emotional power and rich suggestiveness is dangerous and can
mislead.  Hence, many traditional stories and music forms
must be prohibited because they foster social disruption.
And an important aspect of justice in the community must be
a careful attention to the use of poetic language.  Plato's
position seems to be, at least on one reading of him, that
metaphorical language in the service of just vision is an
essential part of the community, but everything depends upon
that shaping vision.  Therefore fiction and the poetic
language associated with it must be carefully monitored.

Plato is writing at a time when the community has lost
confidence in or is not longer in agreement about its
cultural traditions, as these express themselves in its
traditional fictions, and he's calling for a reformation in
the language we use to express our understanding of the
world.  Since our traditions have, in an important manner,
failed us (and any civil war is clearly a failure of
traditions to sustain the community properly), we need a
language cleansed of their deception and inadequacies.  If
we no longer agree about the connotative associations of
language, if we are prepared to fight each other over
images, then we had better abandon that form of language and
place our trust for agreement in something else, like
mathematics, about which we can agree.

Now, the first point I want to make about Hildegard (and we
can say the same about Dante) is that she is very confident
of her narrative traditions and the rich metaphorical
language which she has inherited.  She lives in a world, in
a cosmos, which has a beautiful, geometric structure, one
that is precisely defined and easy to grasp and which the
most important traditions of their culture upheld.  That is
a given.  Yet this structure come to her in a series of
images, of word pictures or illuminations, which have a
strong emotional component because it was permeated with
moral significance.  The spheres of the heavens are not just
geometric shapes: they are symbols of the perfection of
god's creation and an indication of the ranked
interrelatedness of all things in heaven and earth.  People
do not have to ask whether or not that structure is true or
whether we all agree upon it.

As a result of this given structure, both Dante and
Hildegard and many of their medieval contemporaries have
very strong allegorical imaginations; that is, everything
they see around them and in their imaginations becomes an
illuminating part of the divine structure.  They can thus
let their imaginations turn to poetic imagery, to metaphor,
in the knowledge that the given system of meaning can help
everyone to understand it.

It's important to note that Hildegard evidently had her
doubts about the powers of her visions.  They may be
deceiving; they may be dangerous.  Her concern here is not
unlike Plato's.  How does one control the connotative
associations of graphic metaphors?  How does one ensure that
the effects of presenting insights metaphorically do not
break through the intended system of belief and encourage
something very different from what is intended or socially
cohesive?  We may remember that Dante placed in the deeper
parts of hell those false prophets who deceived people with
false images, with emotionally charged language divorced
from the given truth of things.  So he, too, recognizes the
dangers of deceiving visions, corrupting metaphors.

In Hildegard's case, what makes her visions acceptable is
the wonderfully flexible and emotionally coherent belief
system which is itself highly structured visually.  Thus,
the very nature of her belief encourages and contains the
symbolic range of meanings she wishes to present.  There is,
in other words, a natural inclination to allegorical
depictions of the truth, which often contain the pleasing
ambiguity of great art but which also illuminate a system of
belief without challenging it.  We have discussed this
quality in Dante's Inferno, stressing its wonderfully poetic
quality and at the same time pointing out its direct
reference to a belief system.  Hildegard, like other
medieval visionaries, has the advantage of addressing an
audience which is used to receiving highly charged emotional
depictions of the nature of their belief.  Because there is
agreement about the overall structure, there is no seriously
disruptive argument about the interpretative possibilities
of the images (although we may argue about details).

This is an important point, for when the shared agreement
about the symbolic structure of the cosmos started to
change, under the influence of the new science and then
drastic reinterpretations of doctrine (in the Reformation)
the shared agreement about the overall metaphors describing
the universe was broken.  At that point, then, poetic
metaphors become urgent matters of dispute, the tradition of
allegory as a means of communicating one's insights becomes
strained, and a trend arises to make such poetic language
suspect.

In other words, when people's emotional response to
particular images and symbols ceases to arise from a certain
cultural agreement, then they may well start killing each
other over different interpretations (for example, the war
between the followers of Muntzer and the followers of
Zwingli over whether the communion wafer was the body of
Christ or symbolized the body of Christ).  And that point,
as we shall see in reading Hobbes, the call goes out for a
new form of language to communicate our insights, a language
much more precisely defined than poetical metaphor.  It is
no accident that Hobbes, whose major concern was to get
citizens living peacefully together, derived a major part of
his inspiration from reading Euclid and that over half of
the Leviathan is devoted to dealing with interpretation of
scriptural metaphors.

D.  Some Examples from Hildegard's Writings

Hildegard is, as she tells us, a visionary.  That is, she
responds to the world primarily through metaphor.  Instead
of seeking rational definitions and logical relationships,
she immediately puts her understanding of the cosmos into a
picture.  Then, having established the picture, she seeks to
hammer out the concepts she is illuminating with detailed
reference to the visual image:

     The soul is in the body as the sap is in the tree; and
     the powers of the soul are like the figure of the tree.
     How is this so?  Understanding in the soul is like the
     green vigour of the branches and the leaves of the
     tree.  Will is like the flowers on the tree; mind like
     the first fruit bursting forth.  But reason is like the
     fruit in the fullness of maturity; while sense is like
     the height and spread of the tree.  And in the same
     way, the human body is strengthened and supported by
     the soul.  (73)

This is a precise explanation, but the precision arises from
the details of the image, not from any clear unambiguous
definitions or rational arguments about how the details all
fit.  And the persuasive power of the vision comes from our
response to the emotionally charged language, rather than to
any carefully argued deduction from first principles.

This imaging power holds together Hildegard's conceptions of
the world and of human purposes.  Again and again, she
offers us a vision of things and interprets the parts of the
picture to communicate to us through the emotional power of
the image the beauty and urgency of her faith.

At the heart of these images is a sense of the powers of
nature, some vitalist power of life itself, which permeates
the universe.  Hildegard calls this the "greening" power,
and for her it is the all the evidence we need of God's
essential goodness and mercy:

     For there is nothing in creation that does not have
     some radiance--either greenness or seeds or flowers, or
     beauty--otherwise it would not be a part of creation.
     (96)

Some careless commentators have suggested that Hildegard is,
in effect, worshipping nature, that she is a pantheist of
some kind.  This, of course, would be an important heresy.
But if we read her carefully we can see that for her the
creation is omnipresent evidence for the glory and goodness
of the Creator.  By aligning our feelings with the vital
powers of nature we are not worshipping nature; we are, by
contrast, learning more about the power and glory of the
Creator:

     And how could God be known to be life, except through
     the living things which glorify him, since the things
     that praise his glory have proceeded from him? (96)
     
In her visions, then, Hildegard is drawn immediately to
expressing her joyful sense of cosmic interrelatedness and
the moral worth of human life in terms of natural imagery:
greenness, sunlight, water, fire.  What she is trying to do
is not to develop new doctrine but to stir the imaginations
of her readers and viewers with images from the world most
immediately accessible to them.  The goodness of God created
the wonderful plenitude and goodness of nature; the latter
is therefore an everyday reminder of the former.

This sense of the union of the natural processes with the
Divine purposes comes out most strongly at those moments
when Hildegard will use an explicitly sexual metaphor to
insist upon a spiritual matter:

Sweet branch,
From the stock of Jesse,
How magnificent
That God saw the girl's beauty,
Like an eagle,
Fixing its eye on the sun:

When the highest Father saw
The girl's radiance
And desired his Word
To take flesh in her.

For in the hidden mystery of God,
Her mind was filled with light,
And there emerged from the Virgin
A bright flower,
Wonderfully:

When the highest Father saw
The girl's radiance
And desired his World
To take flesh in her.

I don't think here the strong undercurrent of pagan
eroticism is entirely the product of the translation.  Nor
is it out of place.  For in Hildegard the spiritual and the
sensual are often, through her imagery, intertwined.  One
does not get a sense from reading her visions that the two
are antagonistic: the one serves the purposes of the other.

Let me emphasize this last point.  Since we read Plato we
have been dealing with a central metaphor most important to
our culture: the split between the soul and the body or
between the different parts of the soul.  Christianity took
over this radical dichotomy in our view of ourselves and
wrestled with it.  How do we reconcile the conflicting
demands we make upon ourselves?  From various attempts to
reconcile this issue, we have seen already some writers
attempt to limit or deny the demands of the body.  And for
some people this hostility this sometimes generates towards
the body is unacceptable.

In Hildegard, by contrast, the body and the spirit are
united.  The vitalist forces all around us are the best
access we have to the life of the spirit.  The two are not
antagonistic, for creation, and that includes us, is
essentially good.  Recognizing that fact, we can align our
vital forces, our bodies, in the service of the spirit and
vice versa.

     The soul assists the flesh and the flesh, the soul.
     For every single work is perfected through soul as well
     as flesh, so that the soul is revived by doing good and
     holy works with the flesh.  But the flesh is often
     irked when co-operating with the soul, and so the soul
     stoops to the level of the flesh and allows it to take
     delight in some deed, just as a mother causes her
     weeping child to laugh.  And in this way, the flesh
     performs some good works with the soul, but mixed
     together with certain sins which the soul tolerates so
     that the flesh is not oppressed.  For just as the flesh
     lives through the soul, so too, the soul is revived by
     doing good works with the flesh, because the soul has
     been stationed inside the work of the Lord's hands.  In
     the same way that the sun, overcoming night, climbs
     until the middle of the day, so man, too, rises up, by
     avoiding corrupt deeds.  And just as the sun declines
     in the afternoon, so too, the soul makes accord with
     the flesh.  And as the moon is rekindled by the sun so
     that it does not disappear, so the flesh of man is
     sustained by the powers of the soul, so that it does
     not go to ruin.  (96)

Even the creation story, according to Hildegard, bears this
out:

     But the great love that was in Adam when Eve came forth
     from him, and the sweetness of the sleep with which he
     then slept, were turned in his transgression into a
     contrary mode of sweetness.  And so, because a man
     still feels this great sweetness in himself, and is
     like a stag thirsting for the fountain, he races
     swiftly to the woman and she to him--she like a
     threshing-floor pounded by his many strokes and brought
     to heat when the grains are threshed inside her.  (109)

Sexuality here is not, as it often appears in, say, Paul,
something hostile, sinful, and abhorrent, but arises out of
the very sweetness of life itself, and expresses the
natural, beautiful, and fruitful nature of the divine
creation, part of the harvest of God's bounty.

Reading passages like this reminds us of the extreme joy
Hildegard takes in celebrating the world around her, the
human and natural life.  And it points out to us, should we
need to remember, that the spirit of her age, in which such
an allegorizing celebration of life was a common method of
thinking, possessed an exuberance about life, a spiritual
excitement and joy about all aspects of life which we, for
all our technological superiority, seem to have lost.  Such
an awareness is a useful antidote for those who like to
think of the Middle Ages as a gloomy, ignorant, depressing
time when the Church and religion generally severely
restricted the enjoyment human beings might derive out of
their daily living.

What's interesting, too, about all this sense of spontaneous
celebration of life, especially in comparison with Dante, is
that Hildegard, at least in the selections we read, does not
work into her visions anything explicitly from books,
whether the pagan texts, the Bible, or the writings of the
Church fathers.  Of all the texts we are going to read in
Liberal Studies, this seems to have been the one which
relies least on a literary frame of reference.  That may be
because she simply did not have access to many books or that
her visionary powers were simply not stimulated by texts.  I
could find only one reference (on p. 103) to the importance
of the writings of the Doctors of the Church.
E. Notes on Hildegard's Illuminations
(Taken for the most part from Illuminations of Hildegard of
Bingen, with commentary by Matthew Fox: Santa Fe: Bear and
Company, 1985)

Slide 1: The current Benedictine monastery located in
Eibingen on the opposite side of the Rhine from Bingen.

Hildegard started this monastery after the one at
Rupertsburg and would cross the Rhine twice a week to visit
it.  This building dates back only to the nineteenth
century.   The one Hildegard built was destroyed by Swedish
invaders in the seventeenth century.

Slide 2: Behind the current monastery with a view of the
Rhineland Valley

Slide 3: The Cosmic Wheel

Note that these illustrations are based on Hildegard's
vision and that she has extensive commentaries upon them,
identifying various parts, typically in a very allegorical
manner.

[Note word mandala: "maps of the cosmos" designed to orient
and liberate the individual consciousness, emphasizing the
unity of the cosmos and the relationship of the individual
to that unity (developed in the east among the Hindu, and
also among the Celts).  These are similar to the OT maps of
the world, common in the Middle Ages]

A circular vision of the universe, with a human figure in
the centre forming the axis of the universe, aligned to the
image of a double figure of God, holding the universe to his
chest, the entire creation is in the bosom of God.  Humanity
may be dominant figure here, but, in Hildegard's words: "in
this circle of earthy existence you shine so finely, it
surpasses understanding.  God hugs you.  You are encircled
by the arms of the mystery of God."

Who is the figure holding the wheel to his/her chest?  It is
"a wondrously beautiful image within the mystery of God.  It
had a human form, and its countenance was of such beauty and
radiance that I could have more easily gazed at the sun than
at that face."  Who is this figure? ". . .Love appearing in
a human form, the love of our heavenly Father. . . Love--in
the power of the everlasting God head, full of exquisite
beauty, marvelous in its mysterious gifts."

Note the heads of animals breathing onto the human figure;
leopard, wolf, lion, bear, stage, crab, serpent, and lamb.
Seven planets exist in the various circles and "all the
planets shone their rays at the animal heads as well as at
the human figure."  Sixteen major stars appear within the
circle and other, lesser stars fill the circles of air."
"Just as a wheel encloses within itself what lies hidden
within it, so also does the Holy Godhead enclose everything
within itself without limitation, and it exceeds everything"
(40).

The major design features of this illumination, which we see
again and again the Hildegard's work, is the combination of
the circle with a vertical, so that we get a combined sense
of inclusiveness in the perfection of the circle, combined
with a sense of a vertical hierarchy linking all creation up
to God.  These two shapes are basic to Dante's vision as
well, and they serve to emphasize the interrelatedness of
all things on different levels, so that there is a clear
sense of belonging in a group in a ranked hierarchy which
brings us to God.

Note figure of Hildegard in the bottom left corner.

[Ij: This illustration is a reminder of the powerful
allegorical imagination of the medieval mind--the
visualization of the cosmos in a vivid structure in which
everything has a reference point outward to the final
meeting of all and inward to the moral purpose of human
beings.  The understanding of the universe, the model by
which it is depicted and which the mystic imagination
conceives artistic meaning is permeated by a sense of the
totality of all things, the position and interrelatedness of
all its parts, and the moral imperatives which it contains.
In this sense the insistence upon circularity, symmetry,
carefully observed vertical gradations stems from an
emotional sense of the cosmic order, the divinely shaped and
purposeful structure of things, both of individual human
beings and of the entire cosmos itself.

Only if one fully appreciates just what these pictures of
the universe really mean, can one properly understand the
most important origin of the resistance to the new
conceptions of the universe which appear with the rise of
the new science.  It is not just that the opponents of
Galileo and others were defending the credibility of
established institutions, although that is an important part
of it; they were also defending a morally meaningful sense
of the carefully ordered moral structure of the cosmos.  Bit
by bit, the new science was challenging the basic
assumptions of these allegories, and finally it destroyed
them altogether, and with that structure was destroyed the
very basis for such an intuitively vivid imaginative sense
of the totality of God's creation on a human scale.

In this connection the film The Seventh Seal, which many of
you saw this week, focuses on the agony of knight who is
desperately seeking some frame of reference for all the
images of destruction he sees all around him.  His spiritual
agony comes from the inability to see of have faith in such
an unified meaningful cosmic framework.  The only person in
the film who is not so tormented is the artist, who still
has the power to generate visions, but they are not ones he
can share]

Slide 4: Human As Microcosm of the Macrocosm

[Note the emphasis here on human beings as always within a
cosmic system of moral meaning, typically seen as concentric
circles and often with a vertical component directing us up
and down a hierarchy.  In this vision the importance of
human beings is emphasized, their centrality, but only in
relation to the totality.  Humanity is defined within and by
an elaborate structure.  The beauty and significance of
human life does not arise from humanity itself but from its
context within a much larger totality.  This is not argued
for in her art; it is celebrated as a vision of the truth of
things]

Note, too, in these illustrations of Hildegard the absence
of any sense of spatial perspective.  Everything is in the
foreground.  And this provides a spatial equivalent of
Dante's sense of history, which holds all the characters and
events in history in the foreground and for the same reason.
Since the truth of the world is eternally present, we can
represent it in a flat two dimensional representation--every
part of the mandala is equally significant, equally true in
the light of the unchanging truth of the structure of the
universe.  We don't therefore relate the parts through
depth, any more than Dante relates the parts by any informed
sense of historical differences.  For the development of
perspective, like the development of the idea of historical
development and change, to which it is related, involves a
different form of thinking about the universe, a distant
background or past and a closer or more immediate
foreground.  Such distinctions are foreign to Hildegard's
visions of the world or to Dante's conception of history.

Slide 5: Cultivating the Cosmic Tree (47)

Central activity is human beings cultivating the earth,
maintaining that, and benefiting from the fertility of the
earth, and the activity on the circumference directs itself
at these central figures (the various animal heads).  And
from the ring of celestial fire which surrounds the cosmos
the hand of God reaches out to link itself with the figure
of Hildegard in the midst of a mystic experience.

Slide 6: All Beings Celebrate Creation (75)

Here we have nine concentric circles, each one crammed with
detail.  Perhaps these symbolize the nine choirs of angels
(angels, archangels, virtues, powers, principalities,
dominations, thrones, cherubin, and seraphim), containing in
the centre an empty circle, the mystery of the not yet
created.  Hildegard herself has a long commentary on this
vision, pointing out what each of the circles represents,
but without that detailed knowledge we can still respond to
the overall structure of this illumination as emphasizing
the unity of the cosmos.

Slide 7: Five Virtues Building a Heavenly City in the House
of Wisdom

Jesus Christ at the top, centrally below him is Constancy
(with a stag on her chest), to the right of Constancy is
Heavenly Desire, to the left of Constancy is Compunction of
the Heart; on the lower right the figure with wings is
Harmony and Peace; and on the lower left, the circle of
Compassion and the figure Contempt of the World.

Slide 8: The Egg of the Universe (p. 35)

Here the universe is depicted as an egg. "By this supreme
instrument in the figure of an egg, and which is the
universe, invisible and eternal things are manifested."  The
universe is surrounded by a firmament of fire: "On the outer
part along the circle was a bright flame, and in that fire
was a globe of reddish fire so great that the entire egg was
being lit up by it.  Three torches were at the top."

Here again we get the combination of the all inclusive
sphere of the cosmos, emphasizing the unity of nature (here
depicted in the form of flowers) and the vertical, leading
us up from the human faces at the bottom, up to the pyramid
at the top.  The egg, the source of all life, is at the
centre, almost as a organizing nucleus out of which things
radiate and from which the structure of the whole takes its
shape.

Another implication in picturing our universe as an egg is
the idea of its being organic, alive, incipient.  An egg is
the beginning of something wonderful, a new being, a new
creation.  Hildegard is celebrating the potential of our
cosmos--its hidden mysteries of delight and grandeur, of
beauty and healing, as yet unrevealed.  (36)

Slide 9: The Golden Tent (p. 55)

On the left the divine gold of God is enters the womb and
into the fetus.  Note that the Godhead here is both a square
and also a trinity, all filled with countless eyes watching
what goes on in the world, on either side and fireballs in
the centre stripe (the source of what is going into the
child).

Human people are bringing food (cheeses) to celebrate the
birth, but in the back is a lurking demonic figure waiting
to claim the child, if possible.

On the right there is a sequence of scenes read from the
bottom up, emphasizing the struggle of life, leading up to
the divine tent at the bottom.  The journey involves chains,
torture instruments, enemies, adders, scorpions, dragons,
serpents, mountain and river obstacles.  Eventually one can
erect one's divine tent, which will keep enemies at bay
(similar in texture and colour to the original material we
received from God).

Slide 10: The Six Days of Creation Renewed

Again a central circle, here showing the six days of
creation, penetrated in a very sexual image from the
concentric circles above, below which is a lump of earth
with a human head emerging.

The figure closest to the divine wheel is depicted as
enjoying the natural creation.  The figure at the bottom
appears to be Christ himself, blessing the world and
arresting the fall of the bearded figure in the middle
stripe.

Slide 11: Adam's Fall (p. 59)

In the four corners, the four elements, stars and flowers
dominate the heavens.  What dominates the picture is the
dark tree, fingers, snake which stands between the human
figure and the heavens.  The human figure is suspended
poised between the hell fire at the base of the tree, the
beauty and purity of the trees on the right, with wings
attached to the heart (but a frail wing).

Slide 12: Lucifer's Fall (p. 61)

Note the gradual extinguishing of the spark, but always
still there.  Creation is full of the divine fire.  Note the
strong vertical emphasis here.

Slide 13: New Heaven, New Earth (p. 111)

Vision of the arrival of peace on earth, in three rings.
The lower ring contains the cosmic processes--flames of
fire, flames of air, surround the ring of stars, sky,
flowers, herbs and water.  Thus the four elements, earth,
air, fire, water, are all in place and at harmony, namely at
rest.

The middle ring contains the builders of the city of Zion--
the great celestial army of the chosen ones who possess the
brightness of eternity and seek celestial joys in great
glory.

The top ring pictures the Creator with the lamb of God, the
ring of the Holy Spirit and basked in divine light depicted
in gold.

Note that humanity is the link between the elements of the
earth and the celestial sphere.

Slide 14: Communion of Saints in Cosmic Symphony

Seven groups pictured in the seven rings.  At the top is
Mary, Queen of Heaven; next circle represents the orders of
angels, the other rings the apostles, patriarchs and
prophets, martyrs, confessors, and the virgins.  The title
and the poses suggest that they are singing, creating a
tonal harmony which unifies the cosmos (Hildegard's most
insistent metaphor, as Anne is going to discuss).

Slide 15: Sophia: Mother Wisdom, Mother Church (71)

Odd figure of a woman, who appears to have something like
scales on her torso (Church as a mermaid), holding up,
almost with appendages like flippers, the group of the
faithful, predominantly women.  Note the expression on the
face: a mixture of sternness and sorrow and firmness (?).

Slide 16: The Creator's Glory, Creation's Glory (51)

God the Creator on a throne with a footstool of fire.  But
the fire is in the form of a shell, sitting on a sphere or a
pool of water: fire and water, the literal and metaphorical
gifts of god  Note the traditional pose of God, with the
blessing and the book.


Slide 17: Mystical Body Taming the Devil (95)

At the bottom a huge enchained  but still active monster,
held down by the weight of the vertical column but there's a
fragility about the power, so that the monster may break
out.  The human figures, blissfully unaware of the monster
are very close to it, almost in contact with it.  I get a
sense here that only the united actions of the Christian
community will be enough to maintain the imprisonment.

Slide 18: Powers, Principalities and Antichrist

Note the figure very much like the church figure earlier in
the bottom left.  Note the bottom of the figure--a phallic
antichrist in the midst of Mother Church.  And nature itself
has turned menacing, the people huddle together under a
black cloud, being driven into the darkness by the monster
in the thighs of the Antichrist.

Note re animals: "She tells us that the fiery dog stands for
humans who "bite at their own condition" and who do not burn
with the justice of God.  The reddish lion stands for
"warlike men" who wage wars without considering God's
judgment.  The pale horse stands for those who put luxury
living and their own selfish pleasure before the performance
of worthwhile acts.  The black pig stands for rulers who
crate sadness and uncleanness in themselves and their
subjects.  The wolf stands for those who rob others.  The
black rope, she tells us, represents "the darkness that
stretches out many injustices."  (88)

Slide 19: Strengthening the Soul for the Journey (83)

The female pilgrim kneeling before the upright white pillar
(phallic?) is being attacked by demons but looking up to the
hand of God which seems to be blessing her activities.  The
emphasis here too is on the individual--the isolated figure
caught in a dramatic conflict between rival allegiances and
affirming her readiness in the face of pain and danger to
follow the path of God.

Slide 20: Emptying: The True Spirit of Poverty (79)

Illumination is dominated by the figure at the top, clearly
a figure of God, whose wings extend outward, even out of the
framing rectangle, shielding the figures below.  The God
figures sits on what looks like a mountain above the stars,
with pairs of people in separate compartments below (some
asleep).  The bottom part of the picture seems to be the sky
(with stars) and the earth.  In the bottom left is a figure
covered with eyes.  The other figure appears to be a poor
pilgrim of some sort, in pilgrim robes and bare feet,
connected directly to the divine figure up above.  It's
interesting that the connection is direct, and bypasses the
figures in the heavens.



                     List of Works Cited

Eliot, T. S.  "Hamlet."  Selected Essays.  New Edition.  New
York: Harcourt, Brace &  World, 1964.

Hildegard of Bingen.  Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen.
Commentary by Matthew    Fox.  Santa Fe: Bear and Company,
1985.

Hildegard of Bingen.  Mystical Writings.  Ed. Fiona Bowie
and Oliver Davies.  Translated     by Robert Carver.  New
York: Crossroad, 1992.
_______________________________
1 "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is
by finding an `objective correlative'; in other words, a set
of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be
the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the
external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience,
are given, the emotion is immediately evoked" (Eliot 124-5).