SOURCE: Samuel Lyndon Gladden, "Hildegard's Awakening: A Self-Portrait of Disruptive Excess," in Representations of the Middle Ages, edited by Bonnie Wheeler, Academia Press, 1993, pp. 217-33.

[In the following essay, Gladden challenges the notion (promoted by Hildegard herself) that Hildegard was a passive agent of God's will whose writings merely record divine truth as it was imparted to her. Gladden argues that "Hildegard's role as an active, subjective editor of God's message becomes clear" and attempts to demonstrate that Hildegard 'knowingly and will-fully encodes a feminine voice in the midst of what appears to be the message of an obviously male-identified God."]

The twelfth-century German mystic Hildegard of Bingen is perhaps best known for her extraordinary relationship with God, a relationship which apparently enabled Hildegard to communicate directly the voice and words of God to humans. Appearing to Hildegard in a series of visions, God made clear his desire that the holy woman communicate all which she saw and heard and, further, that she refrain from offering any sort of interference—whether that interference take the form of interpretation, explanation, or intentional editing—so that God's message might be delivered intact, so to speak, without the taint of mortal desire. Scivias, a text written between 1141 and 1151 and which has become one of Hildegard's most celebrated works, is a document whose words describe Hildegard's visions and whose illuminations provide a sort of window into what Hildegard saw when she received these visions.¹ In the 'Declaration' which open Scivias, Hildegard describes a moment Fox refers to as her 'awakening,' and the illumination corresponding to this moment Fox entitles Hildegard's 'Self-Portrait'.² It is this moment of awakening which interests me, and it is the correspondence between the text describing this vision and the illumination itself upon which I will focus in arguing that Hildegard's awakening—a moment almost always read without question as an instance of absolute passivity, of the absence of subjectivity, of, in short, what many might call 'true' femininity—is actually a moment in which Hildegard knowingly and willfully encodes a feminine voice in the midst of what appears to be the message of an obviously male-identified God.

Recent attention to the life and work of Hildegard of Bingen has frequently subscribed to a feminist agenda. The importance of Newman's Sister of Wisdom in the context of such concerns cannot be underestimated; that text does much to explore the ramifications of Hildegard's theology for women, specifically for women trapped in patriarchal social and religious systems. One recent discussion of Hildegard in terms of sex, gender, and feminist theory is Allen's 'Hildegard of Bingen's Philosophy of Sex Identity', which draws on the mystic's text Causae et curae to describe what Allen refers to as Hildegard's 'phenomenology' of sex identity.³ Allen describes Hildegard's notion of four distinct kinds of men and women, and she emphasizes Hildegard's insistence that sex identity is a primary means of self-identification which is not altered by death: Hildegard claims in Scivias that 'all the people rose up with their members whole, with their bodies whole, and with their own sex'.⁴ Allen proves convincingly that 'Hildegard … argued that the soul was fully integrated with the body' and that the mystic 'seems to have reached continually toward a balanced view of sex identity which would avoid both the devaluation of the body found in Platonic tradition and the devaluation of the female found in Aristotelian tradition'.⁵

In another recent feminist reading of Hildegard of Bingen Newman argues that 'to account for the exceptional claims of a woman like Hildegard, we need to consider both the dynamics of mystical illumination per se and its refraction through the cultural and psychological prism of gender'.⁶ Newman identifies three specific goals which Hildegard's visions allowed her to realize: 'a direct experience of God, a source of unmediated truth, and a form of public validation'.⁷ Newman makes clear that Hildegard was aware of the potential for controversy surrounding a female visionary in a patriarchal age; she quotes Hildegard as remarking that 'now, to the scandal of men, women are prophesying'.⁸ Newman assesses the ultimate importance of Hildegard's visions and concludes that, in addition to serving as a medium of divine inspiration, these remarkable experiences stood as 'a source of vindication against real or potential opponents'.⁹ Finally, Newman acknowledges the almost-clichéd 'I am not worthy' stance of 'poor little female' mystics and concludes that 'many of their visions obliquely sanctioned a role reversal by presenting men as negligent or weak, women as prophetic or powerful, and aspects of God as feminine'.¹⁰

But the power and significance of the feminine is certainly not a new concern in scholarship relating to Hildegard of Bingen. Indeed, Hildegard may rightfully be called an early proponent of women's rights, and her direct refusals to conform to masculine authority are well-documented. With the spread of Hildegard's fame as a visionary—which attracted the approval of pope Eugenius III, who read parts of the then-incomplete Scivias to the prelates at the synod at Trier in 1147-8—the mystic and her female followers expressed a desire to leave the cramped quarters of St Disibod and to establish their own exclusively-female holy community at Rupertsberg, near Bingen.¹¹ The monks of St Disibod refused to allow Hildegard such freedom, in part because her fame ensured their monastery a certain amount of economic stability. Hildegard became gravely ill and claimed she had been stricken down by God in order that the monks might recognize her desire as divinely authorized; in fact, her body became so inexplicably heavy that the monks could not physically lift her from her sickbed. Finally, they granted her leave to establish her own community at Rupertsberg.

Many years later, this community was again the focus of the harsh disapproval of the church—read, of male—authority. The year before she died, Hildegard and her monastery were placed under interdict because Hildegard had allowed the body of an excommunicate to be buried on the grounds.¹² Church authority demanded the exhumation and relocation of the body; Hildegard refused, saying the deceased had confessed his sins before death. To prevent her sisters from caving in to (male) authority, Hildegard went to the cemetery herself and removed all signs marking the place of burial. Under this interdiction, her monastery was denied the pleasure of worshipping through music, a kind of text Hildegard felt was particularly inseparable from the language of spirituality.¹³ Hildegard admonished church authority by writing that 'those who choose to silence music … will go to a place where they will be "without the company of the angelic songs of praises in heaven'".¹⁴ Further, she attacked the archbishop of Mainz, saying to him that 'the spirit of God, full of zeal, says: pastors, lament and mourn at this time, because you do not know what you do, when you squander offices, whose source is God, for financial gain and to please the foolishness of wicked men, who have no fear of God'.¹⁵ Before Hildegard's death, the interdict was finally removed, but, perhaps as a result of her stern refusals to bow to what she seems to have perceived as misguided (male) authority, repeated attempts to canonize her have failed.¹⁶

In her preface to the Paulist Press edition of Scivias, Bynum insists that not only are Hildegard's visions political, but, like all of Hildegard's work, they are also unique in their attention to female bodily phenomena, such as menstrual cramps and feminine sexuality.¹⁷ Further, it should be noted that Hildegard was an early gynecologist and produced a text on the subject, Causae et curae, as a supplement to her 'major scientific and medical encyclopedia, Nine Books on the Subtleties of Different Kinds of Creatures'.¹⁸ In contextualizing Scivias within the canon of medieval mystic literature, Bynum asks the following question: 'Did medieval women speak with their own voices and out of their own experience, or is their work merely the inscription of the misogynist and patriarchal values of the dominant religious tradition?'¹⁹ Later, Bynum asks whether 'phrases such as Hildegard's repeated assertion of female inferiority [can] really be accepted as women's own, even when penned or dictated by the woman herself?'.²⁰ Bynum's answer is persuasive: she notes that female writing may often be shaped by fear and may serve both as a passive service for others and as 'audacious self-integration',²¹ that is, a bold assertion of the feminine subject into a text seemingly directed by and for masculine empowerment.

In assessing these complaints of weakness and inability which pervade Hildegard's texts, one must not neglect the history of writings by other male and female mystics and prophets who make similar protestations. Such positions of weakness, humility, shame, and unworthiness may be called 'feminine' because they imply oppression, but males may occupy these 'feminine' positions as well as females. Consider, for example, the story of Jeremiah:

Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, 'Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou carnest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.' Then said I, 'Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child.' … Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, 'Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.'²²

Clearly, postures of utter submissiveness, of the inability to speak of one's own accord, of complete passivity and unworthiness, are ones frequently occupied by individuals claiming to act as messengers of God. Thus Hildegard's unworthiness, her passivity, is consistent with the 'feminine' nature of a long line of prophets and mystics who came before and after her.

Newman argues that Hildegard's theological message— specifically, the text of Scivias—was both endorsed and protected by men.²³ Further, she suggests, '[Hildegard's] posture as a simple, unlearned person was not intended to deceive; aside from reinforcing her prophetic persona, it constitutes an implicit critique of the learned clerics whose negligence, [Hildegard] believed, had necessitated her mission'.²⁴ In other words, Hildegard assumed the position of an unworthy woman because she felt the supposedly worthy males of the church had failed to communicate effectively, fully, and truthfully, the message of God. In her assessment of the historical reception of Scivias, Newman makes clear that what she calls 'more virile'—that is, more patriarchal—ages denied Hildegard's authorship or contribution to the text completely, thus effectively erasing not only the importance of Hildegard's participation in the material production of this document but also her crucial contribution to the production of its meaning; these 'more virile' ages have celebrated in her place the one incorrectly perceived to be the only author of Scivias—God.²⁵ Newman's own assessment of the reception of this text—she says, 'If Hildegard had been a male theologian, her Scivias would have been considered one of the most important early medieval summas'—again makes clear two key points about the treatment of this early feminine text by a patriarchal culture: first, that Scivias is a document whose first-person narrative specifically denies the intervention of a subjective, feminine voice in its authorship; second, that the reception of Scivias by generations of readers has perpetuated this erasure of a feminine voice amidst its seemingly masculine—that is, its God-centered—message.²⁶

Newman's argument in Sister of Wisdom is particularly relevant to my own assessment of the subversive agenda of Hildegard's supposed 'lowly woman' status. First, female powerlessness in Hildegard's work is not necessarily negative; Newman reminds us that the 'power through powerlessness' agenda is commonly encouraged by Christianity.²⁷ Newman also indicates that Hildegard's notion of female inferiority is not meant to undercut her own understanding of, and emphasis on, the sexual nature of God; Hildegard maintained that God was half-masculine and half-feminine and that these halves remained in perfect balance, neither one becoming more important or more dominant than the other.²⁸ Finally, Newman provides another example of female 'power through powerlessness' in the case of Catherine of Siena who 'was told [by her confessor] that she need not wear male garb because God could use her, precisely as a woman, in order to shame unworthy men'.²⁹ I would add to this that God's 'use' of Catherine of Siena—in itself interesting in light of feminism's concern with the politics of power—is dependent upon the patriarchal culture in which Catherine lived. That is, her ability to 'shame' men arose from a social condition in which females always already signified less than males; if a woman such as Catherine of Siena was able to shame men, then this was a double shame, because it involved an 'unnatural' violation of a gender hierarchy in which man was presumed always to be better than woman.

The contemporary French philosopher, linguist, psychoanalyst, and feminist theorist Irigaray³⁰ makes explicit some of the implicit claims of Hildegard: 'I am trying … to go back through the masculine imaginary, to interpret the way it has reduced [women] to silence, to muteness or mimicry, and I am attempting, from that startingpoint and at the same time, to (re)discover a possible space for the feminine imaginary'.³¹ Irigaray offers a set of questions with which all her work grapples: She asks, 'How can [women] free themselves from their expropriation within patriarchal culture? What questions should they address to its discourse? … How can they "put" these questions so that they will not be once more "repressed", "censured"? But also how can they already speak (as) women?'³² She offers this possibility: 'by going back through the dominant discourse. By interrogating men's [supposed] "mastery". By speaking to women. And among women. [But] can this speaking (as) woman be written? How?'³³

Irigaray suggests that there is only one 'path' through which feminine enunciation can take place, the one she says has been 'historically assigned to the feminine: that of mimicry'.³⁴ Mimesis, a concept Irigaray co-opts from Plato, may be defined as 'an attempt [first] to avoid adopting the position of the male subject and thus perpetuating it; and … [second] to avoid recapture within the parameters of a metaphysical system in which the place of/for the feminine is marked out in advance'.³⁵ More simply, mimesis is a process by which a feminine voice willfully enters into a phallocentric or patriarchal system of discourse and uses that system ironically, subverting the discourse and forcing it to work against itself. During mimicry, the speaking woman deliberately assumes the feminine style and posture assigned to her within phallocentric discourse— that is, the position of a passive, insignificant medium through whom a masculine message may be transmitted —and, by so doing, the speaking woman uncovers 'the mechanisms by which [phallocentric discourse] exploits her'.³⁶ Irigaray explains that mimesis 'converts] a form of subordination into an affirmation' of feminine subjectivity and thereby enables the feminine to 'thwart' the masculine, phallocentric discourse which it only pretends to repeat without censure.³⁷ Mimesis in the concept of spirituality or religion may result in what Irigaray refers to as a moment of 'disruptive excess', an instance during which a supposedly 'divine' message is exploited by a singular, subjective feminine voice.³⁸ Instances of disruptive excess confound language and push to the limit the inability of discourse to encapsulate and to convey specific meaning. One might liken an instance of disruptive excess to the proverbial cup which runneth over; disruptive excess may be described as an overflowing of sensory perception, a heightening of physical, mental, and spiritual sensations beyond the descriptive powers of any system of language or discourse which attempts to capture it. Each person involved in such an experience—the prophetic seer as well as those who hear, read, or otherwise re-experience the vision of the seer—is disrupted in the sense that he or she is left to try to make sense of a moment which can never fully be explained. Disruptive excess enables some sort of ecstatic opening in meaning, and this opening immediately disrupts meaning because it can never be made to 'mean' any single, definable thing; meaning is opened, disrupted, and cannot be closed, be made to make 'sense', in such moments of overflow.

Although Newman acknowledges that all of Hildegard's work is 'colored subtly but pervasively by her feminine self-awareness', she implies that such self-awareness is always negative; Newman argues that what she calls Hildegard's 'autobiographical prefaces and endings' focus on feminine weakness and inability and prove beyond a doubt that Hildegard is, indeed, not wise and, further, the 'her weakness and foolishness have been empowered by God alone'.³⁹ But Bynum reads Hildegard's confessions of inability and weakness as ironic: She suggests that 'the low-keyed irony with which Hildegard remainded corrupt clerics that God had been forced to choose an inferior mouthpiece because they had fallen so low … [has] hardly seemed to all recent interpreters an internalizing of misogyny'.⁴⁰

Irigaray's critique of Freud reminds us that the 'proper' course of action for a female in a patriarchal system is willful sublimation, or the letting go of individual desire.⁴¹ One of the forms common to feminine sublimation is shame; clearly, Hildegard, at least on the surface, appears to be, like Margery Kempe or Julian of Norwich, ashamed of her own inferiority in comparison to the message of the masculine God for whom she claims to speak.⁴² Yet even under the rule of patriarchy, there is a means of momentary escape from feminine sublimation: Irigaray contends that a specifically feminine desire—an undeniably feminine existence—can indeed be experienced and expressed in dreams or in other forms of alterd consciousness.⁴³ Clearly, Hildegard's visions remove her from the world in which she lives, and, obiously, therse visions may be said to have been experienced in some sort of ecstatic state of altered consiousness.

Newman and Fox both provide evidence that Hildegard's awakening was experienced during a period of extreme illness. Hildegard describes her condition prior to the awakening as one that left her 'without voice, frustrated, [and] physically sick'.⁴⁴ Fox maintains that 'in the name of humility she made herself sick';⁴⁵ Hildegard herself admitted, 'not in stubbornness but in humility, I refused to write for so long that I felt pressed down under the whip of God into a bed of sickness'.⁴⁶ During her illness, God appeared to her and commanded her to write the visions he revealed. Hildegard recounts beginning this task, saying, 'I put my hand to writing. Once I did this, a deep and profound exposition of books came over me!'⁴⁷ It is clear that the usually obvious binary relationship between active and passive elements is, here, much more complicated. It is Hildegard's own action, her explicit refusal to communicate her visions to the world, that leads to a temporary experience of passivity—of illness—but which ultimately concludes in another period of activity, the writing of the text of Scivias and the beginning of her long literary career. Had Hildegard never asserted her own will, had she not initially refused to write these visions, only then might these visions have truly remained without the 'taint' of a feminine voice; however, it is clear that the act of inscription resulted not directly from God's command that Hildegard write but, more significantly, only after Hildegard firmly refused to be so manipulated.⁴⁸

Hildegard explains her reasons for refusing God's explicit command that she write: 'But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words..…'⁴⁹ Hildegard's refusal to write is not only an assertion of her own will over God's, but it is an ironic assertion, for it is made indirectly by way of her continual insistence on her own weakness and inability. Yet in contemplating the act of inscription, Hildegard's role as an active, subjective editor of God's message becomes clear: in the explanation for her own delay in writing, Hildegard addresses an important concern of current literary theory: the inability of language to encapsulate thought. Further, her refusal to write becomes the first step in Hildegard's process not merely of editing but also of co-authoring God's message. It is Hildegard who decides which words to use in communicating God's message, and it is she who first inscribes this message into language.

It is true that at the end of the description of her calling, Hildegard reminds her readers that she is not responsible for the message of Scivias. She insists that, 'I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places'.⁵⁰ On a level of literal meaning, this sentence is an explicit, first-person denial of any claims to authorship or intervention in the text. But this claim is ironic; in fact, it is perhaps the most clear example of Irigarian mimicry in the canon of Hildegard's writing. The fact that her seemingly sincere denial of authorship comes at the end of this vision, after we have already heard the voice of God insisting that Hildegard's contribution to the meaning of the text is insignificant, indicates that, for the reader of Scivias, the true voice of authority is Hildegard's. Why else would Hildegard feel the need to make this first-person intrusion at the last possible second in the narrative? Even though God appears to have the last word, so to speak, in the 'Declaration', His words are quoted—appropriated, taken—by Hildegard: 'And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, "Cry out therefore, and write thus!'"⁵¹ The significance of the last sentence lies only secondarily in God's command; the primary function of this sentence is to bolster Hildegard's own position as the ultimate textual authority. 'I spoke, I wrote, I heard' emerges as Hildegard's litany throughout this 'Declaration', and the words of God she recounts are, in my view, merely the skeleton, the footnotes, upon which Hildegard composes the body of her vision(s). Obviously, Hildegard's intention in denying authorial intervention is to remind the reader—one could be even stronger and say to convince the reader—that she has nothing to do with authorship or with the construction of meaning in this text. But in this very protestation, Hildegard reveals herself as the 'true' author of Scivias, the holder of textual authority.

When she was 'in the forty-third year of [her] earthly course', Hildegard heard the voice of God commanding her thus:

O fragile human, ashes of ashes, and filth of filth! … since you are timid in speaking, and simple in expounding, and untaught in writing … speak and write these things … that you see and hear. And write them not by yourself or any other human being, but by the will of Him Who knows, sees, and disposes all things in the secrets of His mysteries.⁵²

Two years earlier, Hildegard had experienced a vision which enabled her to understand religious texts and which she took as a sign that her visions were, in fact, legitimate and were not merely ecstatic hallucinations. The illumination of this vision may be shown visually to corroborate my argument that Hildegard's awakening constitutes a moment of disruptive excess, an instance in which a supposedly masculine, divine message is intruded upon by a feminine voice.⁵³

Hildegard's awakening is the moment at which this mystic mystic become 'a recipient of the Pentecostal fire'.⁵⁴ The monk on the right is Hildegard's secretary, Volmar, who transcribed into grammatically-correct Latin the text of the visions Hildegard dictated to him.⁵⁵ Fox notes that the pillars on the left and right of this illumination contain the stick figures of a male and female figure, and he suggests these be read in terms of the Hopi corn man and woman who symbolize fertility and germination.⁵⁶ Although this reading is undeniably anachronistic, it does remind us of a set of concerns appropriate to Hildegard's agenda—fertility, germination, and human reproduction. Recall, for example, Bynum's claim in the preface to Scivias that all of Hildegard's work is unique in its attention to feminine bodily phenomena.⁵⁷ But the imagery of such phenomena is much more explicit in this illumination than mere outlines of stick figures which may or may not represent the Hopi corn man and woman.⁵⁸

I suggest that we regard this illumination not only as an illustration of awakening but also as a representation of birth. Hildegard sits in a near-fetal position— knees drawn up toward midsection, right arm folded inward—and she is enclosed within an arched opening. The pentecostal fire at her head, the fire of inspiration, is blood-red. What we are witnessing is birth. The arched opening is, perhaps, a vagina. The fire at Hildegard's head may symbolize the painful, bloody tearing of the maternal body during birth; one might even go so far as to say that the fire is actually connected to the arched wall around Hildegard's head and, therefore, that it truly suggests the first moment of the painful serration of the lips of the vagina during child-birth.⁵⁹ The columns on the left and right of the illumination, the so-called 'corn' man and woman columns, may be regarded as the drawn-up knees of the birthing mother, and the turrets above these columns are clearly representative of breasts. Thus we are looking at a painting that bears a striking resemblance to a birthing mother squatting, her knees drawn up toward her breasts.⁶⁰

It is necessary to acknowledge and to make clear two important facts in light of my reading of this illumination. Late in life, Hildegard admitted that she had been receiving visions long before God commanded her to write: 'From my early childhood, before my bones, nerves, and veins were fully strengthened, I have always seen this vision in my soul, even to the present time, when I am more than seventy years old'.⁶¹ Further, when she was three years old, Hildegard experienced a vision of dazzling light which, at the time, she was too young to understand or to describe.⁶² But even more significant in the context of this paper is Hildegard's recollection of her very first vision, a vision she insisted was experienced in her mother's womb. She recounted, 'In my first formation, when in my mother's womb God raised me up with the breath of life, he fixed this vision in my soul'.⁶³ Hildegard's account of receiving God's vision while in the womb provides a contemporaneous source that corroborates my reading derived from late twentieth-century feminist theory.

The head of the monk Volmar is the only other object penetrating the space of this vaginal arch. Volmar's head is extended unnaturally from his shoulders. Thus, we may be seeing a metaphorical representation of erection, an erection which extends into the arched area and further reminds us that this rounded space is vaginal. Further, the fact that the body of Volmar is excluded from this arched area may be read in terms of Irigaray's notion of mimesis. Hildegard seems to be penning the message of God, a message from the holder of masculine authority—God—to men, the perpetuators of masculine empowerment. But the space of inscription, the vaginal arch through which Hildegard is birthed by the pentecostal fire, is a space which cannot be completely accessed by a male, and this only-partial access is symbolized by the head-only intrusion of Volmar. Mimesis occurs when a speaking/writing woman appears to buy into a phallocentric system of discourse but actually uses phallocentric discourse to deliver a pro-feminine message and, thus, to marginalize from her own meaning the phallus which discourse 'normally' privileges and empowers. Hildegard—a female—is the only one who has complete access to the message/the pentecostal fire/the bloody birth of the awakening; Volmar—a male—can experience this same phenomenon vicariously and then only through the account which Hildegard chooses to reveal to him, thus his depiction here as enjoying only partial access to the (vaginal) chamber of divine inspiration.

Finally, let us consider this illumination's depiction of inscription. Having been awakened by the pentecostal fire, having been born from an undeniably maternal body, Hildegard, a woman, takes up a writing instrument. Drawing on Jacques Derrida's familiar claim, this stylus/pen may be read as a symbol of the penis, the phallus, and, by extension, of male empowerment. Hildegard uses—that is, she mimes—the function of this pen/stylus, and she is thus able to encode her version of what she perceives as truth onto a tablet. Finally, this tablet echoes the arched shape of the vaginal enclosure through which Hildegard is being awakened or born. Thus we are witnessing the birth of a female visionary who has access to what is supposedly a masculine message and who uses a masculine instrument—that is, the pen, or the act of writing itself—to encode the message back into a feminine medium, a text full of words whose meanings, by Hildegard's own admission, are so diverse that they are misleading.⁶⁴ This illumination makes clear that Hildegard's moment of awakening and its accompanying 'Self-Portrait' constitute a moment of disruptive excess, for the masculine, divine message it claims to convey is undeniably undercut by mimesis.

Notes

1. [Hildegard of Bingen,] Scivias, [trans Mother Columbia Hart and Jane Bishop, preface Caroline Walker Bynum, intro Barbara J. Newman, The Classics of Western Spirituality: A Library of the Great Spiritual Masters] (Paulist Press, New York 1990).
2. Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen, ed and commentary Matthew Fox (Bear, Santa Fe 1985) p 26. For a thorough history of the text and illuminations of Scivias, see Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theory of the Feminine (University of California Press, Berkeley 1987) p 17.
3. Prudence Allen, RSM, 'Hildegard of Bingen's Philosophy of Sex Identity,' Thought 64 (Sept 1989) pp 231-41.
4. Quoted Allen p 235.
5. Allen pp 234, 240, emphasis added.
6. Barbara Newman, 'Hildegard of Bingen: Visions and Validation,' Church History 54 (June 1985) pp 163-75.
7. Newman, 'Visions' p 164, emphasis added.
8. 'Ein unveröffentlichtes Hildegard Fragment, 4.28', ed Heinrich Schipperges, Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 40 (1956) p 71, quoted and trans Newman, 'Visions' p 171.
9. Newman, 'Visions' p 175, emphasis added.
10. Newman, 'Visions' p 175.
11. Newman, Sister of Wisdom p 9; Fox p 8.
12. Newman, Sister of Wisdom 14; Fox p 8.
13. Fox pp 8-9. One must also keep in mind when considering the importance of music to Hildegard's notion of spirituality that she wrote music and maintained that the music she composed had been revealed to her by God in visions. This music, which Hildegard insisted sounded exactly like the music of heaven, was somewhat of a departure from contemporary musical style; before Hildegard's intervention, music consisted of chants. Hildegard, essentially, invented melody, the 'jumping' between individual notes of more than the half-step or whole-step characteristic of the chant style.
14. Quoted Fox p 9.
15. Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge/New York 1984) p 145.
16. Fox p 9. Newman, Sister of Wisdom pp 3-4, discusses Hildegard's position as a woman trapped in a paradoxically effeminate yet phallocentric age in which men in general have failed to carry out their obligations to God. Newman (pp 241-2) also relates Hildegard's own vision of Ecclesia, the female spirit who embodies the feminine aspects of God and Christianity. Hildegard's fascinating account of this incident further emphasizes the degree to which her male contemporaries persisted in rejecting the role of the feminine in Christianity.
17. Bynum pp 2-3.
18. Subtilitatum diversarum naturarum creaturarum libri novem, ed Charles Daremberg and F.A. Reuss, PL 197 cols 1117-1352; Causae et curae, ed Paul Kaiser (Leipzig 1903), cited Newman, Sister of Wisdom p 10.
19. Bynum p 3.
20. Bynum p 4.
21. Bynum pp 3-4.
22. Jer. 1.4-6, 9.
23. Newman, Scivias p 13. For more on Hildegard's acceptance and validation by her male contemporaries, see Newman, Sister of Wisdom p 2.
24. Newman, Scivias p 18.
25. Newman, Scivias p 47.
26. Newman, Scivias p 23. Newman also provides additional evidence for the unfavorable treatment of texts written by women: 'In 1220, forty years after Hildegard's death, the Cistercian prior Gebeno of Eberbach compiled an anthology of [Hildegard's] prophetic and apocalyptic writings. This influential text, entitled Pentachronon or Mirror of Future Times, survives in well over a hundred manuscripts—as compared with eleven for the Scivias and four for [another of Hildegard's texts], On the Activity of God,' Sister of Wisdom p 22.
27. Newman, Sister of Wisdom p 248.
28. Newman, Sister of Wisdom p 255.
29. See ASB April, 3 p 884; Newman, Sister of Wisdom p 256.
30. It is purely coincidental that just as Hildegard of Bingen invoked the anger of the monks of St Disibod when she expressed a desire to break from their monastery, so Irigaray was expelled from the department of psychoanalytics at Vincennes as a result of her groundbreaking doctoral dissertation, Speculum of the Other Woman (1974), which questioned male authority in all of western culture and, even more significantly, expressed considerable contempt for many of the theories of the 'god' of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Again, it is merely coincidental that the title of an anthology of Hildegard's prophecies compiled in 1220 by a male editor, Speculum futurorum temporum, bears a similarity to the title of Irigaray's controversial dissertation.
31. Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trans Catherine Porter (Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1985) p 164.
32. Irigaray p 119.
33. Irigaray p 119.
34. Irigaray p 76.
35. Irigaray p 8, emphasis added.
36. Catherine Porter, 'Notes on Selected Terms,' Irigaray p 220.
37. Irigaray p 76.
38. Irigaray p 76.
39. Scivias pp 45, 17. It is not particularly surprising that Newman would take this stance in accepting Hildegard's status as a weak and foolish being. In fact, Newman suffers from an apparently troublesome relationship with regard to the validation of any aspect of the feminine beyond that which is biologically specific. For instance (and regrettably), Newman lists what she calls the 'two positive attributes' of femininity—virginity and maternity,' Sister of Wisdom p 239.
40. Bynum p 5.
41. Irigaray p 125. Luce Irigaray, 'The Blind Spot of an Old Dream of Symmetry,' Speculum of the Other Woman, trans Gillian C. Gill (Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1985) pp 11-129.
42. But again, this 'I am not worthy' stance adopted by so many females in the Christian tradition must be read in terms of the Christian insistence that there is great 'power through powerlessness.'
43. Irigaray p 125.
44. Fox p 27.
45. Fox p 27, emphasis added.
46. Fox p 27, emphasis added.
47. Fox p 27.
48. Newman denies that Hildegard's visions were experienced in states of ecstasy but provides evidence that they did occur during instances of great suffering and illness (Sister of Wisdom pp 6, 39). Although Newman insists that these visions 'seldom interfered with [Hildegard's] normal functioning,' she does acknowledge that the mystic's senses were often confused or distorted during these experiences. Hildegard herself indicates that '[her] soul tastes and sees them,' that her soul literally 'drinks them in …': Epistola 2 in Analecta Sanctae Hildegardis, ed J.-B. Pitra, Analecta Sacra, 8 (Monte Cassino 1882) pp 332-3, quoted and trans Newman, Sister of Wisdom p 7, emphasis added. Newman elsewhere adds that in 1917 an attempt was made by 'the historian of science' Charles Singer to diagnose Hildegard as suffering from ' "scintillating scotoma," a form of migraine characterized by hallucinations of flashing, circling, or fermenting points of light.' Newman largely discounts this notion, commenting that '[s]uch a diagnosis may be correct; but unlike Singer, we must avoid the reductionist error of assuming that a physiological cause (or better, correlative) of the visions excludes the possibility of any higher inspiration' ('Visions' p 167).
49. Sed ego, quamuis haec uiderem et audirem, tamen propter dubietatem et malam opinionem et propter diuersitatem uerborum hominum … scribere recusaui … H[ildegardis] S[civias], ed Adelgundis Führkotter, CCCM 42 'Protestificatio' lines 79-82 (p 5); Scivias, 'Declaration' p 60.
50. Et dixi et scripsi haec non secundum adinuentionem cordis mei aut ullius hominis, sed ut ea in caelestibus vidi, audiui et percepi per secreta mysteria Dei, HS, 'Protestificatio' lines 94-6 (p 6); Scivias, 'Declaration' p 61.
51. Et iterum audiui uocem de caelo mihi dicentem: 'Clama ergo et scribe sic', HS, 'Protestificatio' lines 98-9 (p 6); Scivias, 'Declaration' p 61.
52. O homo fragilis, et cinis cineris, et putredo putredinis.… quia timida es ad loquendum et simplex ad exponendum et indocta ad scribendum ea.… dic ea quae uides et audis; et scribe ea non secundum te nec secundum alium hominem, sed secundum uoluntatem scientis, uidentis et disponentis omnia in secretis mysteriorum suorum, HS, 'Protestificatio' lines 9-21 (p 3); Scivias, 'Declaration' p 59.
53. My reading of the illumination of Hildegard's awakening will draw harsh criticism from those opposed to Freudian psychoanalytic criticism. It is not my intention to insist that my reading of this painting is the only one possible, nor do I wish to imply that this reading is necessarily the best or even the most appropriate one. Yet, as made clear above, recent scholarship on Hildegard of Bingen has often taken a feminist slant, and I am certain that my reading of Hildegard's 'Self-Portrait' at least reminds us of the importance of the female body, of gynecology, of reproduction and germination, so crucial to many of Hildegard's texts. My reading of this 'Self-Portrait' in no way anticipates the intentions of its original artist, whether that artist be Hildegard, someone working under Hildegard's direction, or someone completely unknown to Hildegard. Yet applying current methods to texts which preceded them is not without precedent, even in the realm of religion; take, for example, the carbon-dating and radioactive imaging of the Shroud of Turin. Although neither Scivias nor Hildegard's 'Self-Portrait' directly address gynecological issues, the significance to Hildegard of such concerns may certainly be validated by her other works.
54. Fox p 28.
55. Fox p 29. Let me make clear that my reading of this illumination is not meant to discount the significance of Volmar in the life and work of Hildegard of Bingen. On the contrary, Volmar was more than just Hildegard's scribe. He and Hildegard enjoyed a close and meaningful friendship in as much as such closeness was possible given their religious devotion.
56. Fox p 29.
57. Bynum p 43.
58. Of the function of the feminine in Hildegard's theology and on the role of the feminine as a sort of intermediary between humankind and God, Newman notes that 'the feminine is that in God which binds itself most intimately with the human race' (Sister of Wisdom p 250). Clearly, Hildegard's awakening is a moment in which she—a mortal—is bound, joined, with God. Further, Newman acknowledges that '[w]here the feminine presides, God stoops to humanity and humanity aspires to God' (p 45).
59. One might also comment on the significance of the number of fingers/tongues/flames in the pentecostal fire: there are five. This number, of course, corresponds to the number of fingers on the hand, thus suggesting that this is the hand of God reaching toward Hildegard. Further, five is the number of books comprising the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Five is also the number of bodily senses or, as they were called in Hildegard's time, 'wits.' Further, five is the number of joys and sorrows and glories of Mary in the rosary.
60. Indeed, I argue that the Hildegard of the image resembles a birthing mother lying on her back with her feet in stirrups. Having established some sort of authority for discussing Hildegard's vision in terms of womb imagery, I am more than ready to admit that my own reading of this illumination as a birthing mother in stirrups is anachronistic; during Hildegard's lifetime, women gave birth by squatting, a position which, by the way, Hildegard herself assumes in this illumination. I suggest that my reading of Hildegard's 'Self-Portrait' be considered metaphorically: it reminds us that what we are witnessing here is some kind of representation of birth. Chapter two of Newman's Sister of Wisdom, 'The Feminine Divine' (pp 42-88), provides a lengthy and important discussion about the place and significance of the feminine in the divine nature of God. Newman indicates that one of the names by which Christ is to be known, 'Wisdom,' is feminine in its etymological origin, and she indicates that the theme of Wisdom—and, therefore, the role of Christ—is not infrequently depicted in religious texts and iconography 'as bride, mother, and queen' (p 46, emphasis added). Thus my reading of Hildegard's 'Self-Portrait' may not be as subversive as it at first seems. Yes, God is the Father, but, in the form of Christ, God may also be the Mother. Recall Newman's suggestion that were God to be without a feminine nature, he or she would remain unable to 'stoop to humanity.'
61. Epistola 2, Pitra, Analecta pp 332-3, quoted and trans, Newman, Sister of Wisdom p 6.
62. Epistola 2, Pitra, Analecta pp 332-3, quoted and trans, Newman, Sister of Wisdom p 7.
63. In prima formatione mea, cum deus in utero matris mee spiraculo vite suscitavit me, visionem istam infixit anime mee' Hildegard of Bingen, Vita, Berlin MS Staatsbibl. Lat. Qu. 674, fol 6^vb, quoted and trans Dronke pp 145, 231.
64. Recall that Hildegard's explanation for her initial refusal to write the things which God revealed to her arose from 'doubt and bad faith and the diversity of human words' (Scivias, 'Declaration' p 60, emphasis added).