Cosmos, Liturgy, and the Arts in the Twelfth Century: Hildegard's Illuminated "Scivias"

By Margot E. Fassler

In Cosmos, Liturgy, and the Arts in the Twelfth Century, Margot E. Fassler takes readers into the rich, complex world of Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias (meaning “Know the ways”) to explore how medieval thinkers understood and imagined the universe. Hildegard, renowned for her contributions to theology, music, literature, and art, developed unique methods for integrating these forms of thought and expression into a complete vision of the cosmos and of the human journey. Scivias was Hildegard’s first major theological work and the only one of her writings that was both illuminated and copied by scribes from her monastery during her lifetime. It contains not just religious visions and theological commentary, but also a shortened version of Hildegard’s play Ordo virtutum (“Play of the virtues”), plus the texts of fourteen musical compositions.

These elements of Scivias, Fassler contends, form a coherent whole demonstrating how Hildegard used theology and the liturgical arts to lead and to teach the nuns of her community. Hildegard’s visual and sonic images unfold slowly and deliberately, opening up varied paths of knowing. Hildegard and her nuns adapted forms of singing that they believed to be crucial to the reform of the Church in their day and central to the ongoing turning of the heavens and to the nature of time itself. Hildegard’s vision of the universe is a “Cosmic Egg,” as described in Scivias, filled with strife and striving, and at its center unfolds the epic drama of every human soul, embodied through sound and singing. Though Hildegard’s view of the cosmos is far removed from modern understanding, Fassler’s analysis reveals how this dynamic cosmological framework from the Middle Ages resonates with contemporary thinking in surprising ways, and underscores the vitality of the arts as embodied modes of theological expression and knowledge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Release date: Dec 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781512823080

Margot E. Fassler

Margot E. Fassler is Keough Hesburgh Professor of Music History and Liturgy at the University of Notre Dame and Robert Tangeman Professor of Music History, Emerita at Yale University.

Book preview

Cover: Cosmos, Liturgy, and the Arts in the Twelfth Century, Hildegard’s Illuminated Scivias by Margot E. Fassler

THE MIDDLE AGES SERIES

Ruth Mazo Karras, Series Editor

Edward Peters, Founding Editor

A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

COSMOS, LITURGY, AND THE ARTS IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY

Hildegard’s Illuminated Scivias

Margot E. Fassler

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS

PHILADELPHIA

Copyright © 2023 University of Pennsylvania Press

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.

Published by

University of Pennsylvania Press

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112

www.upenn.edu/pennpress

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Hardcover ISBN: 9781512823073

Ebook ISBN: 9781512823080

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.

For François, who loves the liturgy

For Luke, who loves the stars

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

List of Abbreviations

Note on Conventions

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Cosmological Background

Chapter 2.Scivias on the Rupertsberg

Chapter 3. Cosmology and the Liturgy: Hildegard and the One Enthroned

Chapter 4. Hildegard and the Hexameron

Chapter 5. The Cosmic Egg and the Liturgy

Chapter 6. The Edifice of Salvation and Its Virtues

Chapter 7. Fall and Recovery in the Ordo virtutum

Chapter 8. Endings and Time Beyond Time

Color plates

Appendix 1. Locations of Paintings, Flourished Initials, Headings, and Quire Signatures in Wiesbaden 1

Appendix 2. Scribes Responsible for Texts and Headings in MS W, Wiesbaden 1, Illuminated Scivias, from Black-and-White Photos

Appendix 3. Texts for the Office of All Saints, with Commentary

Appendix 4. Smaller Dramatic/Musical Units as Found in the Ordo virtutum

Notes

Bibliography

General Index

Index of Chants and Chant Texts from the Liturgy, Symphonia and the Ordo virtutum

Index of Scripture

Index of Manuscripts

Acknowledgments

ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURES

Fig. Int.1. An example of Scribe 6 in the collection of Hildegard’s Letters. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. phil. 4o 253 (Z), fol. 34r

Fig. Int.2. The responsory O uos imitatores for confessors, as copied on a blank page. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. phil. 4o 253 (Z), fol. 40v

Fig. 2.1. Communion. Scivias II.vi, from W, fol. 86r, text by Scribe A (Scribe 2 in the manuscript)

Fig. 2.2. Examples of Scribe 1 and Scribe 2. W, fol. 59r, in Scivias II.iii.34

Fig. 2.3. Examples of Scribe 2 and Scribe 3. W, fol. 195v, in Scivias III.ix.14–16

Fig. 3.1. Portrait of Hildegard and Volmar in Scivias, preface: (a) W, fol. 1r, col. A, il, text as copied by Scribe 1; (b) Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Salem X.16, fol. 7r, detail

Fig. 3.2. The One Enthroned. Scivias I.i. Text as copied by Scribe 1, from W, fol. 2r, col. B, detail

Fig. 4.1. The Trinity in the Unity. Scivias II.ii, from W, fol. 47r

Fig. 4.2. Creation and Redemption. Scivias II.i, from W, fol. 41v

Fig. 4.3. The Fall. Scivias I.ii, from W, fol. 4r

Fig. 4.4. Creation and the Fall. Frontispiece of Scivias from Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Salem X.16, fol. 2r

Fig. 4.5. Creation and the Fall. The Zwiefalten martyrology, Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. hist. 2o 415, fol. 17r

Fig. 5.1. The Cosmic Egg. Scivias I.iii, from W, fol. 14r

Fig. 5.2. Twelve Heads of the Winds, from a treatise on astronomy, twelfth century: (a) Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodl. 614, fol. 34v; (b) windheads from Liber floridus, Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS 92, fol. 24r

Fig. 5.3. Two twelfth-century renderings of the cosmos. Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MS 73, fol. 2v

Fig. 5.4. The cosmos with a T-O map, from the Liber floridus: (a) Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS 92, fol. 94v; (b) Isidore, Etymologies, a T-O map, mid-twelfth century, Bibliothèque Méjanes, Aix-en-Provence MS 0025 (0914), p. 293r

Fig. 5.5. Satan. Scivias II.vii, from W, fol. 115v

Fig. 5.6. Communion. Scivias II.vi, from W, fol. 86v

Fig. 5.7. Cosmic Egg. Scivias I.iii, from W, fol. 14r, detail

Fig. 6.1. Pillar of the Word of God. Scivias III.iv, from W, fol. 145v

Fig. 6.2. Knowledge of God. Scivias III.iv, from W, fol. 146r

Fig. 6.3. The Triple Wall. Scivias III.vi, from W, fol. 161v

Fig. 6.4. The Tower of the Church. Scivias III.ix, from W, fol. 192r

Fig. 6.5. The Son of Man. Scivias III.x, from W, fol. 203v

Fig. 8.1. The End of Time. Scivias III.xii, from W, fol. 225r

PLATES

Plate I. The Sacrament of Communion. Scivias II.vi. E, fol. 86r

Plate II. Hildegard and Volmar. Scivias, preface. E, fol. 1r, col. A, detail

Plate III. The One Enthroned. Scivias I.i. E, fol. 2r, col. B, detail

Plate IV. The Moon on Nov. 1, 1112 and the Moon in the Cosmic Egg

Plate V. The Trinity in the Unity. Scivias, II.ii. E, fol. 47r

Plate VI. The Trinity, Rothschild Canticles. New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 404, fol. 100r

Plate VII. Creation and Redemption. Scivias II.i. E, fol. 41v

Plate VIII. The Fall of Lucifer and His Minions. Scivias III.i. E, fol. 123r

Plate IX. The Cosmic Egg. Scivias I.iii. E, fol. 14r

Plate X. The Rupertsberg antependium, early thirteenth century. Brussels, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire

Plate XI. The Edifice of Salvation. Scivias III.ii. E, fol. 130v

Plate XII. Initial of Adspiciens for Advent; leaf from an antiphoner, ca. 1140–60. Cleveland Museum of Art MS 1949.202

Plate XIII. The Pillar of the Humanity of the Savior. Scivias III.viii. E, fol. 178r

Plate XIV. The Symphony of the Blessed. Scivias III.xiii. E, fol. 229r

Plate XV. The Son of Man. Scivias III.x. E, fol. 203v

Plate XVI. The End of Time. Scivias III.xii. E, fol. 225r

MUSIC EXAMPLES

Ex. 4.1. Antiphon: Laus trinitati. D, fol. 157r

Ex. 4.2. Phrase from O splendidissima gemma. D, fol. 154r–v

Ex. 4.3. Antiphon: O splendidissima gemma. D fol. 154r–v

Ex. 4.4. Antiphon: O gloriosissimi. D, fol. 159r

Ex. 4.5. Chains of thirds employed in O gloriosissimi; e final, with the octave e-b-ee as major pitches and resting points in the musical rhetoric.

Ex. 6.1. Antiphon: O uirtus sapientie. R, fol. 466r

Ex. 7.1. (a) Opening of the responsory Qui sunt hi as found in a twelfth-century antiphoner. Austria, Klosterneuberg, 1012, fol. 72r (Feast of St. Matthew and other Apostles as well as All Saints); (b) Opening query of the Prophets from the Ordo virtutum. R fol. 478v

Ex. 7.2. (a) The virtues’ opening from the Ordo virtutum is related to yet transforms the prophets’ music. R, fol. 278v; (b) Felix Anima (opening), which mirrors the virtues’ opening. R, fol. 278v

Ex. 7.3. Anima, weighed down, is conquered (opening). R, fol. 279r

Ex. 7.4. O plangens uox. R, fol. 479r

Ex. 7.5. From Anima’s lament. R, fol. 480v

Ex. 7.6. Anima begins to sing in D. R, fol. 480v

Ex. 7.7. Anima makes the 5th. R, fol. 480v

Ex. 7.8. The virtues beckon. R, fol. 480v

Ex. 7.9. O uiuens fons. R, fol. 481r

Ex. 7.10. Anima makes the octave. R, fol. 481r

Ex. 7.11. Opening of O nobilissima uiriditas, last chant text in Scivias, compared to the opening of Ave Regina caelorum

Ex. 7.12. Aue regina celorum. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 12044, fol. 177v

Ex. 7.13. Possible prophetic foreshadowing. R, fol. 480r

Ex. 7.14. Victory is defined in C. R, fol. 480

Ex. 7.15. Victory over Satan in C, with the word gaudete compared to gaude

Ex. 7.16. Virtues to Anima, still felix, but nearing her moment of fall (opening of the play). R, fol. 478v, compared to the statement at the end of the play, R. fol. 481v

Ex. 8.1. In principio. R, fol. 481v

Ex. 8.2. Chains of thirds in the final melisma

Ex. 8.3. The final melisma of In principio

Ex. 8.4. O eterne deus. D, fol. 153r

Ex. 8.5. From the responsory for angels (in fonte aspicitis: you behold in the fountain). R, fol. 468v

Ex. 8.6. From the responsory for Patriarchs and Prophets. R, fol. 469r (through the rushing way)

Ex. 8.7. From the responsory for Apostles O lucidissima apostolorum turba. R, fol. 469v

Ex. 8.8. Final melisma from the responsory Vos flores for martyrs. R, fol. 470r

Ex. 8.9. From the responsory for confessors. R, fol. 470v

Ex. 8.10. Hodie aperuit. D, fol. 154v

TABLES

Table 2.1. Manuscripts containing Hildegard’s trilogy copied on the Rupertsberg

Table 2.2. The four most prevalent Rupertsberg scribes and their work on the Trilogy

Table 3.1. Musical settings of O Jerusalem compared

Table 3.2. O Jerusalem, with strophes organized by music and musical repetitions

Table 7.1. Named and costumed virtues in the Edifice of Salvation (Scivias III) and in the Ordo virtutum

Table 8.1. Responsories for the Feast of All Saints, and the Common of the Saints or feast from which the first eight were borrowed

Table 8.2. Scivias chants

ABBREVIATIONS

SIGLA OF MANUSCRIPTS

OTHER ABBREVIATIONS

NOTE ON CONVENTIONS

Psalms have been numbered following the Vulgate.

Pitches have been designated according to the Guidonian system: Γ, A–G, a–g, aa–gg, where c is the equivalent of Middle C. In the musical examples I have transcribed Hildegard’s music in the treble clef, as the music was originally designed for women to sing. Hence some notes are outside the Guidonian hand; the octave including high c is aaa–ggg. However, specific pitch designation (e.g., aa = 440) did not exist in the Middle Ages, and as long as the relationship between pitches is maintained, the music can be situated wherever it is most comfortable for the singers.

INTRODUCTION

Before the Fall of Adam, the heavens were immovable and did not turn, but after the Fall, they gradually started to move and to spin. On the Last Day they will again come to rest, as it was at the beginning before the Fall.

[Ante causum Ade firmamentum inmobile fuit et non circumuoluebatur, post casum autem eius cepit moueri et circumuolui; sed post nouissimum diem inmobile stabit, ut in prima creatione anti casum Ade fuit.]

—Cause et cure, I.27

This eight-chapter study relates to the ways in which Christian theologians and scientists in the first half of the twelfth century thought about the universe, not only in their treatises and scientific calculations but also in their ecclesiology, the visual arts, music, poetry, and drama. It is only through accounting for these several dimensions of understanding that the best sense of the whole can be achieved.¹ And for this work, the Benedictine nun Hildegard of Bingen is a unique and skillful guide. The systematic view she designed of the cosmos, its creation and workings, is far removed from modern understandings, rooted as it is in her times and place, but it is dynamic and resonates with contemporary issues in a surprising number of ways. To know her views both as expressed in her first major treatise and in its illuminations is to gain otherwise unattainable knowledge about the past and about medieval cosmological investigations in their multidisciplinary splendor. In a larger sense, it relates directly to the history of science, offering a view from the first half of the twelfth century, a time of change and exploration, of reworking past understandings, and of renaissance. The book shows how science, theology, the arts, and the liturgy functioned together in the first half of the twelfth century.²

This book is about creation and cosmos in Hildegard of Bingen’s illuminated Scivias.³ It has a companion project as well, a unique digitized model of the cosmos and its stages of creation developed in collaboration with Christian Jara, closely related to the ways she depicted these and wrote about them, with relevant music, and visuals taken from her illuminated Scivias.⁴ Making the digital model forced us to take the images apart and to think about their intervisuality.⁵ In addition to their relationships with each other, the images offer a depth of meaning that is possible through their situations in Hildegard’s other works. The deep caverns of thought sustaining several of the images are explored here. Although this book stands on its own, independent of the digital model and its website, the book also can work interactively with it. In the book I also introduce the work of many other thinkers, from antiquity to the present time, whose writings relate to Hildegard’s model of the universe, situating it both more broadly and in greater detail.

Chapter 1 presents a brief overview of cosmological understanding up to the first half of the twelfth century: Scivias was written in the fifth decade of the century, in the 1140s. Chapter 2 is a study of Wiesbaden, Hochschul- und Landesbibliothek RheinMain 1, the now missing illuminated Scivias prepared on the Rupertsberg, with attention to its scribes and to scribal practices on the Rupertsberg. The third chapter of this book relates Hildegard’s formation as a nun to selected liturgical understandings she would have experienced early in life and their cosmological underpinnings, with emphasis on the ways in which Scivias is informed by the Feast of All Saints, the day of the nuns’ consecration. Study of the first two paintings in the treatise suggests what Scivias and the images would have symbolized to a community of Benedictine nuns in the first half of the twelfth century. Chapter 4 offers an analysis of the six stages of cosmic creation, the hexameron, as Hildegard understood them, beginning with her beliefs about time before time and matter before matter. Her hexameron is rooted in her own creation as a consecrated virgin, divinely commissioned to write down her visions. The model she created of the cosmos, depicted most graphically in Scivias, Book 1, vision iii, is the subject of Chapter 5; this contains her work as an artistic designer in situating her own time and place within her cosmography. Chapter 6 focuses on the strategies Hildegard employed in Scivias to build her Edifice of Salvation, way station by way station. Chapter 7 is about the battle embodied within her notated play Ordo virtutum, with emphasis on the voice of prophecy and Hildegard’s role as a teacher and leader of a monastic community. Her play and her chants are ways of bringing people deeply into her own closeness to God, a communal mysticism.⁶ Chapter 8 demonstrates how the final chant of the play relates to Hildegard’s view of the cosmos and the end of time, and then moves to her final painting and what comes after the God-given purposes of the universe have been fulfilled. Ideas in Chapter 8 return to the themes of All Saints discussed in Chapter 3, with study of the chant texts also found at the close of the treatise.

Hildegard’s cosmos has many meanings for it relates to the Church (in heaven and on earth), to the sacraments, to her play Ordo virtutum, to her views of the meanings of the universe (its beginnings and its inevitable end), to the nature of time, and to the place of human beings within the universe, and to the workings of her own monastic community. Basic to this understanding is music, especially as sung by people as they worship. In Hildegard’s thought scheme, liturgical song is cosmological. In this book I argue that Scivias is the setting for Hildegard’s initial understandings of the universe, and the place of her chants and her play within it are crucial to the ways in which she thought the universe was formed, continued to exist, and would be remade at the end. In order to proceed with this complicated hypothesis, I need to clear the deck here briefly regarding three subjects of central importance and my ways of treating them: chants, artworks, and scientific writings. Although Hildegard has been much in the news of late, and the publications on her have increased greatly in recent decades, much remains to be said, especially in regard to the unique survivals her materials offer for understanding the lives of women religious in the Latin Middle Ages.

Scivias and Hildegard’s Chants

Most of Hildegard’s lyrical compositions are difficult to date, although because a set of fourteen of their texts is included at the close of Scivias, it seems certain that a significant number of them were already finished by the time the treatise itself was completed, around 1151.⁷ I have drawn upon many of Hildegard’s chant lyrics in this study, even though some, including the Ursula chants, were certainly composed after Scivias was complete. I have also included my own transcriptions of several chants made from the Riesencodex and the Dendermonde codex, the bases for discussion of how the musical settings underscore the meanings of the texts.⁸ An overview of the chronology for the songs is difficult to produce with certainty; some argue that the texts were written first and later set to music. Hildegard denies this. In a letter that quotes her, Guibert of Gembloux, who became her secretary late in life, describes Hildegard’s compositional process. She hears the melodies as parts of her visions, remembers them, and later sets words to them so they can be sung as part of worship:

Moreover, returning to ordinary life from the melody of that internal concert, she frequently takes delight in causing those sweet modes which she learns and remembers in that spiritual harmony to reverberate with the sound of voices, and, remembering God, making a festive day from what she remembers of that spiritual music, and often, delighted to find those same melodies in their resounding to be more pleasing than those of common human effort, makes words for them for the praise of God and in honor of the saints, to be sung publicly in church.⁹

As Jutta von Sponheim died in 1136, and Hildegard was her immediate successor as head of the female community on the Disibodenberg, she would have been in charge of and therefore capable of introducing music into the community for nearly fifteen years before the move of her community of Benedictine nuns to the Rupertsberg.¹⁰ It is probable that she had already produced chants and her play in these fruitful years, and that a desire for greater liturgical autonomy apart from the community of Benedictine monks at the Disibodenberg may have been one of the reasons for her wish to move the community. Her liturgical texts have a powerful Mariological cast, and her play was written for women to sing and emphasizes the role of consecrated women in salvation history. In any case, we can be fairly certain that at least the Scivias chants and the play Ordo virtutum (the OV) and the truncated version the Exhortatio virtutum (EV) at the end of the treatise were already composed by the time Scivias itself neared completion in 1151. Whether or not this state of completion included texts only or both texts and music cannot be said for sure, but I will argue that the close interconnectedness between text and music in most of Hildegard’s compositions argues for the latter. Many of the Scivias chants would have been ideal for the program of altars established at the Disibodenberg in the years before Hildegard and Volmar departed in the very late 1140s.¹¹ We do not know for sure what altars Hildegard established in her community’s new church, although surely Rupert was a major dedicatee.

Hildegard’s letters, the state of which is outlined briefly in Chapter 2, are the most useful elements for attempting to date the early workings of various scribes in the scriptorium on the Rupertsberg. At least one of these scribes was previously active at the Disibodenberg (Figure Int.1). Among the letters in the collection at Stuttgart (MS Z) someone copied one of Hildegard’s Scivias chants, O uos imitatores, a responsory for confessors (Figure Int.2).¹² The composition is skillfully copied here, without hesitation, and in the notational style that is used on the Rupertsberg and found in both collections of Hildegard’s chants in manuscripts D and R, prepared in the last decade or so of Hildegard’s life.¹³ It is the script of the text rather than the notation that is particularly telling, however. This hand is quite close in style to the earliest surviving hands in the letter manuscripts, especially to the so-called Disibodenberg scribe, Scribe 6. Although the scribe of the chant text is not otherwise found among those in the letter collection Z, it can be distinguished in several of its features from the writing style of several early Rupertsberg scribes as well. The roundness of the letters and the shape of the ampersand are the most telling. The characteristics of this script point to a date for the fragment probably from around the year 1150. Whether it was copied either just before or soon after 1150 is not possible to say, nor can it be proved if it was made at the Disibodenberg or the Rupertsberg. But from this evidence and our study of the scriptorium in Chapter 2, we can strengthen our belief that indeed Hildegard had written music for at least one of the Scivias chants by the time she had finished the treatise, and most likely before this time. From this we can assume that there were other notated copies of her compositions as well and at this relatively early date.¹⁴

Fig. Int.1. An example of Scribe 6 in the collection of Hildegard’s letters. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. phil. 4o 253 (Z), fol. 34r.

Fig. Int.2. The responsory O uos imitatores for confessors, as copied on a blank page. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. phil. 4o 253 (Z), fol. 40v.

The next decade or so after the completion of Scivias in 1151 must have been very fruitful years for Hildegard’s compositions, and the works surely would have included the music for St. Rupert and for many other local saints, as well as other works for the Virgin Mary.¹⁵ The three chants for St. Disibod were included in a letter dated by Van Acker to before 1155, but this does not prove when she wrote them; it could have been earlier. Hildegard visited Trier in 1160, and so her works for saints venerated there (Matthias, Eucharius, and Maximin) may date from then at least, although these too could have been earlier. Hildegard’s chants for John the Evangelist have been linked to the Liber divinorum operum (LDO) and its authorizing vision, a work completed in the last decade of her life. And, lastly, the relics of St. Ursula were obtained on the Rupertsberg between 1167 and 1173, and so this is the range of years posited as a possible time for the composition of the large set of Hildegard’s chants dedicated to her and her companions.¹⁶

In her discussion of the chronology of the chants found in the critical edition of the poems, Barbara Newman calls attention to the statement Hildegard makes about her work in the time between when she finished Scivias and began the Liber vite meritorum (LVM), her second major theological treatise: "the same [divine] vision showed me how to expound the subtleties of different kinds of creatures; answers and admonitions to many people both small and great; the harmonious music of heavenly revelations; and certain other expositions, on which I worked for eight years after the [Scivias] visions, burdened by great sickness and hard physical labor."¹⁷ Newman points out that the title of the collection presented here is never used in the surviving manuscripts of the chants; thus it may refer to an earlier collection, the so-called Miscellany, which is also discussed by Newman in the critical edition of Hildegard’s minor works, and which she believes represents a middle period in Hildegard’s output of compositions.¹⁸

Whatever the dates may be for Hildegard’s chants and their various chronological layers, it is my belief that most of the lyrics and the play are rooted in Hildegard’s cosmological understandings and that she used them to draw worshippers (first and foremost her own community) more deeply into her sense of the liturgy as a cosmic exercise, the very nature of which was not only mirrored allegorically by the cosmos but also effecting change within it, hour by hour and day by day. Although Hildegard’s view of the cosmos and her graphic sense of its diagrammatic plan changed over time, still her first treatise, Scivias, established the foundation for her other statements about the universe and its meanings, and therefore established the ways in which her lyrics and their music function as well. It is for this reason that I will sometimes cite chant texts that may well have been created after Scivias was completed, although discussion is focused on this, her first major theological treatise, and the chant texts included within it, including the play in both versions. In any case, the copy of Scivias to be studied in this book was part of a later campaign of manuscript production on the Rupertsberg and so remained at the forefront of Hildegard’s attention—and that of her community as well.¹⁹

The Paintings in the Illuminated Scivias

The works of art found in Wiesbaden 1 have not yet received the systematic discussion they deserve from art historians.²⁰ It is difficult to commit to studying paintings that survive at present only in copies. There has also been disagreement about the degree to which Hildegard herself was involved in the design and production of the paintings. Madeline Caviness, in a review of the two book-length studies of the artworks that appeared in 1998, challenges the idea that Hildegard was not involved in the production of the artworks in Wiesbaden 1: "if it is to be argued that Hildegard had nothing to do with the pictures in the Rupertsberg Scivias, some tangible alternative has to be suggested, with a workplace, intellectual context, and other extant productions, and not some phantom atelier. As it is, the unique characteristics of the lost Scivias, so well elucidated by Suzuki, suggest the pictures were created in unique circumstances."²¹

The present study is of Hildegard’s explanation of the cosmos in her treatise Scivias, her poetry, her drama, and the artistic works that are directly engaged with the subject. The digital model that Christian Jara and I have made of the cosmos as Hildegard envisioned its creation and its workings has required close study of several of the images, and I have provided the results of the years of investigation here. We have had to take the images apart and reconstitute them for our digital work, and a great deal has been learned in the process. This book is not a systematic study of the Scivias paintings, much as one is needed: I am a liturgical historian and musicologist, not an art historian. Rather, I suggest the kinds of work that can be fruitful as the paintings are repositioned one by one in the context of her other works, and in all the disciplines upon which Hildegard drew in her theological enterprise. Study of the paintings demands careful analysis of detail, not only of what they are (or were) but also of how they created their meanings within Hildegard’s community, where the manuscript texts were copied, and where they were guarded as treasures by subsequent generations of nuns. My study of the photographs of the original illuminated Scivias presented in Chapter 2 offers more reasons for believing in her direct involvement with this manuscript.

The more one knows about the Scivias paintings, the clearer it becomes that only Hildegard herself could have designed these works; she must have consulted closely with the artists too, whoever they were. It seems that sketches of the artworks must have come first and have been the inspiration of every chapter in her treatise.²² I believe the paintings may first have been worked out as embroideries from Hildegard’s sketches, although this cannot be proven. It would make sense, as the women were craftspeople in this art, and the monastery had a specially designated room for these activities.²³

As Jeffrey Hamburger has pointed out, a sermon by the fourteenth-century mystic Johannes Tauler takes as its subject a work that he saw displayed on the wall of the refectory at the Rupertsberg. Hamburger says: Given the communal character of the refectory, where sermons such as Tauler’s may well have been read out to the nuns during their meals, one can imagine either a wall painting, large enough to be visible at a distance, or, no less likely, a wall-hanging, perhaps an embroidery.²⁴ Every one of the paintings in the illuminated Scivias has been placed in a frame, and these frames are of different designs. The message is that these are works of art. But they are dynamic too, with the elements often spilling outside of their frames, such as the feet of characters, scrolls, and the top of the cosmic egg. These are visions, too, that cannot be contained by human artifice. In addition many of the backgrounds of the paintings show cosmographic details, demonstrating that the paintings are part of an extraterrestrial comprehension.

After many years of study, I believe that Hildegard probably would have wanted her third treatise, the LDO, to have been illuminated, and, of course, it was copied with paintings in the third decade of the thirteenth century. Hildegard ran out of time to produce illuminated copies of her other major treatises, but all three are visionary and based on seeing and hearing, and they cry out for the treatment given to Scivias in Wiesbaden 1. Hildegard was very much a visual thinker, and her music and poetry also draw upon what is imagined while singing and listening. One of the greatest difficulties in dealing with her visionary material has to do with whether or not what she saw was a product of being a sufferer from migraines. In her excellent evaluation of this idea and its historiography, Katherine Foxhall has suggested that to brand Hildegard’s visions in this way might be the result of anachronistic reasoning about the phenomenon. Many of us, myself included, have long suffered from migraine headaches, but to have the kinds of visions Hildegard underwent does not follow as a matter of course.²⁵

Changes in Hildegard’s thought regarding the cosmos and its nature can be observed most clearly by comparing Scivias to her third major theological treatise, Liber divinorum operum (LDO).²⁶ Completed in the last years of her life, the LDO is permeated by her interpretation of the cosmos as is Scivias but presents a greatly revised understanding of the model offered in the first major treatise. From time to time I will reference this later work, but it really requires its own study as far as cosmology is concerned; the digital model we have made at the University of Notre Dame of the Hildegardian cosmos is completely based on Scivias, on the paintings I believe Hildegard designed to accompany it, and on Hildegard’s own explanations of cosmic action as found in this particular work. It would be possible to make yet another spectacular digital model for planetaria using the paintings in the thirteenth-century illuminated copy of the LDO, and the result would be completely different from our own visual presentation. The painted LDO, however, was not made on the Rupertsberg, and it was produced decades after Hildegard’s death. The same degree of control that Hildegard had over the illuminated Scivias did not occur in the production of this manuscript, and the ways in which the art and the theology of the LDO were interrelated will not be broached in this study.

The Scientific Writings

One of the major problems one meets when thinking about Hildegard’s understanding of science, including cosmology, has to do with two treatises centering on science and medicine attributed to her, the shorter Physica and the more expansive Cause et cure. In this study, I have had to make some difficult decisions about the use of these materials, both of which have been edited, translated, and commented upon at length in recent scholarship (after having been somewhat neglected in comparison to her other works).²⁷ Neither of these treatises is found in Hildegard’s collected writings in the Riesencodex. Hildegard mentions her scientific work at the opening of her second theological treatise, Liber vite meritorum; Volmar mentions it in his letter to the community at the time of what was thought to be her impending death in 1170.²⁸ But in both cases only one work is mentioned, not two. The most detailed analysis of the situation to date is that found in the introduction to Laurence Moulinier’s edition of Cause et cure. The manuscript tradition as described by Moulinier is strikingly different for the two treatises. Physica survives in five complete manuscripts and five fragments, none of which date from the twelfth century, and the treatise is usually presumed to be authentic.²⁹ Cause et cure, on the other hand, survives in but one complete thirteenth-century source now in Copenhagen (Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Ny kgl. saml. 90b Fol) and in a one-page thirteenth-century fragment now in Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Cod. Lat. Qu. 674, fol. 103r–v). Peter Dronke’s masterful analysis of the Berlin fragment is revelatory. He treats the contents of the work, different from but related to Cause et cure, as authentic and offering a bird’s-eye view of how Volmar and Hildegard may have collaborated in producing her works:

The whole … is essentially a series of disjointed notes, loosely assembled, which Hildegard’s secretary, Volmar, must have set down as they came into Hildegard’s mind. The notes do contain moments of brilliance, but also some sentences that are more banal, and a few that are on the face of it absurd …³⁰ But the notes remained pensées which Hildegard had not yet had the opportunity to order and expand. The frequent insertion of the word quere … probably indicated places where Volmar wanted to ask Hildegard to elaborate what she meant to say.³¹

Laurence Moulinier provides evidence suggesting there were other copies of Cause et cure that no longer survive. Her conclusions about the authenticity of the work are deliberately tentative, but she does point to the decades immediately after Hildegard’s death, when several well-meaning men took up the cause of preparing her works for an eventual push for canonization. It may well be that the treatise was compiled during that time, an expansion of and commentary on Hildegard’s scientific thought. As the notes to Moulinier’s edition of Cause et cure demonstrate, the work resonates in a great number of passages with Hildegard’s demonstrably authentic writings and certainly discusses many of her most favored themes.³² The numbers of sources referenced in the work are nothing short of extraordinary, pressing Moulinier to write a section concerning the reception of the ideas then coming in from newly translated sources. At this point, it seems that it would be a greater fault not to cite Cause et cure in this study of cosmology in Scivias, in spite of the fact that the authenticity of Cause et cure cannot be proven at the present time. And so I have made use of both scientific works in this study, and of the Berlin Fragment as well, if only to demonstrate certain nuances in Hildegard’s thought (or in the immediate reception of her thought).

Conclusion

In general, this eight-chapter study relates to the ways in which Christian theologians and scientists in the first half of the twelfth century thought about the universe, not only in their treatises and scientific calculations but also in their ecclesiology, especially as manifested in the liturgy, the visual arts, music, poetry, and drama.³³ All these dimensions are requisite if scholars are ever able to grasp the complexities of understanding regarding the cosmos in the first half of the twelfth century, and, in my view, a number of finely grained studies of individuals are needed at the present to gain control of this dynamic period. For this work, Hildegard has a special contribution to make. She designed a working system of how the cosmos was created, why it was created, and how it turns, and her work is deeply rooted in her understanding of chant and the liturgy. Because it is difficult to know the specific sources of her thought, as she does not mention the authors who influenced her and the channels of influence through which her ideas were transmitted, I have placed special emphasis on the liturgy, and on texts we can be certain that she knew, as foundational. As a result of Hildegard’s training and her mode of living, the ideas in Scivias are far different from anything that medieval scientists or modern scientists and theologians would advance. But her system has a special kind of beauty because of its multidimensionality and because of Hildegard’s ability to create intertextuality and intervisuality in this unique treatise. The usefulness of Hildegard’s understanding goes beyond even this: she wrote at a time when the fields of science and theology were part of a grander scheme of knowing, and to see how and why this was the case can be both unsettling and encouraging.

CHAPTER 1

The Cosmological Background

The heavens provide a unique and unchanging backdrop for the unfolding of human history.¹ To compare reactions to this fixity is an important way of looking at the differences between the ages, providing a constant for studying modes of perception and belief. The eye is a telescope, and until recent centuries, it was the only one available. Ancient and medieval people looked to the skies, using myth, legend, the arts, religion, and science to explore fundamental questions about the universe and what it means to be a part of it. The atmosphere has changed dramatically over time, but stars observable by the naked eye (around fifteen thousand in number) have not. Some distant stars have faded and died and millions of new stars and galaxies have been discovered by modern people with ever more powerful instruments, but earlier observers could not have seen these newly discovered details, lacking our sophisticated help. Instead in earlier centuries, people knew that the comets come and go and have been able to predict eclipses since the seventh century B.C., both phenomena interpreted as portends of oncoming disasters.² And still every human who walks out at night regards what her ancestors saw thousands of years before and must make of it what she will. The heavens are a touchstone for cultural differences and transformation over time.

Cosmology, the study of the origin, evolution, and future existence of the universe, and cosmogeny, the study of creation, have not changed either in their primary goals of understanding and explanation. There is great ambiguity between the two terms and I will generally use cosmology as all-encompassing, including the stages by which the universe came into being and what we know and have known of it, and cosmography, more narrowly, to mean the mapping of the cosmos. What has changed over time are methods of working and ways of exploring the stages of creation of the universe and its present nature and predictable future. Cosmologists in any age, our own included, look for systems, for meaningful ways to organize what they know and do not know about the universe. Each system reveals a great deal of information about both the time in which it was created and the state of science at that time, and what was thought about the place of the earth and of humans in the larger scheme of things. At various points in time there are those who undertake the mathematics of observation and those who focus on what it all means in a humanistic sense, and often the twain do not meet. At other periods of history, the two ways of studying converge. So it is that understandings of the stars and planets and explanations of creation long have been linked, as philosophers, scientists, theologians, artists, composers, and poets probe into the deepest and most fundamental questions of existence. How old is the universe and how was it formed? How long will it endure? Are we alone?³ For ancient people, cosmology was often holistic, including not just the observable stars but links to animals and people themselves and their ways of being, which were then reflected in writings, systems of symbols, arts, religion, and architecture, leading to several multidisciplinary and more holistic perspectives in the present age, as well as many ideas about extraterrestrials and exoplanets.

The field of archaeoastronomy, for example, proceeds on the premise that understanding the varied views of the cosmos held throughout the ages, and comparing them, provides an important way of knowing about the past.⁴ Archaeoastronomy blends the study of material objects and cosmology. Scholars explore the history of how humans joined understandings of both to make cohesive statements about the observable world, sometimes offering the only evidence that is available for prehistoric cultures. This evidence can reveal what the cosmos and its observable workings meant for the social order from birth to death.⁵ In their overview of the field, David H. Kelley and Eugene F. Milone treat a range of subjects from the ancient world, all related to ways of observing and studying the heavens and of making that study manifest in one way or another. Their work encompasses paleolithic cultures, megalithic cultures, antecedents of the Western tradition, African cultures, Indo-Iranian cultures, China, Korea, and Japan, Oceanic cultures, Mesoamerica, America north of Mexico, South American cultures, the descent of the gods and the purpose of ancient astronomy, and calendars and the spread of astronomical ideas.⁶

This field is not just about scientific understanding but also about culture, and ways of life, for every society superimposes its understanding of who and what it is and what it will be upon its particular map of the stars. This is true, of course, of the contemporary world: changing views of the big bang and when it took place and what it means are part of the everyday framework of most people’s lives, scientists or not. In our own culture, scientists predict our futures based on what they know about the stars, and they make warnings about their natures. Studies of the planet-altering asteroid that struck the earth around 65.5 million years ago have engendered models of past destruction, and what it would be like should such an event occur again.⁷ Some scientists argue for volcanic activity that paved the way for this second round of extinctions via the asteroid.⁸ As a result of scientific work and popularization of its varied findings (especially via the internet), an emphasis on cataclysmic events and fears about them present today can resemble obsessive imaginings of the end of time found among medieval Christians. Perhaps it is part of human nature to have terrors about the end of it all. Hildegard certainly did, and she developed a complex understanding of the apocalypse rooted in a larger cosmology to help gain control of her fears and to link the actions of individuals to the workings of the cosmos.

The subject of archaeoastronomy is vast, and the need for humans to be able to memorize patterns found within the stars for a variety of purposes has long been paramount in every ancient culture. I suggest that the Latin Middle Ages should be included in this subject, and that the ways in which ancient ideas about the universe (its beginnings, its end, and its turnings) were inherited and transformed are crucial for knowing any century, but most particularly the twelfth, a time of great change in cosmological understanding. Hildegard inherited a vast legacy of scientific understanding about the cosmos, and her treatises demonstrate that she was deeply engaged with various parts of it, including works with cosmological diagrams. It is also clear that her ideas were changing as she learned more and as new scientific works were starting to become more widely known in her region in the third quarter of the twelfth century. Our study is an exercise in archaeoastronomy, for it takes what Hildegard knew about the cosmos and interrelates this with her theological explorations, and ultimately argues the fundamental importance of both for a larger understanding of this period of time.

Offered below is an introductory overview of creation and cosmology as the topic was known and studied in western Europe in the period before Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) wrote her treatise Scivias (1141–51). This study, which leads up to the first decades of the twelfth century, provides a context for ideas Hildegard might have held about creation and cosmos, with attention in particular to the illuminated copy that was compiled and copied, at least for the most part, in her scriptorium on the Rupertsberg. The purpose is to see more generally and in an introductory way how she and this massive illuminated compendium fit into the larger scheme of things, pointing also to what is unique about her for the history of comparative cosmology. Many of the ideas mentioned that predate Hildegard or were found in the writings of her most significant contemporaries will reoccur in the chapters to follow as I