A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

HILDEGARD, THE SCHOOLS, AND THEIR CRITICS
Justin A. Stover
The century in which Hildegard of Bingen lived was a time of great upheaval
and cultural change. Prominent among these developments is the transformation
of the education system, founded on monasteries and cathedral
schools, into the independent academic institutions which would eventually
become universities.1 The full story of this dramatic transformation
has not yet been narrated, nor has Hildegard’s place in these events been
fully recounted. Constant Mews, in a seminal 1998 study, introduced the
question of Hildegard’s relationship to the schools of her day, concluding
that “we cannot exclude Hildegard from the scholastic world in which she
lived.”2 By examining her reading, her personal connection with schoolmasters,
her imitation of scholastic genres, and her conception of human
reason and its limits, this study will further investigate the magistra’s
connections to the scholastic world and contextualize her critique of the
schools within a 12th-century discourse of monastic anti-scholasticism.
Hildegard’s Scholastic Sources
Hildegard’s sources have been occasionally discussed, and it is not the
place here to fully investigate the question.3 Nonetheless, in order to
1 Four general surveys in English provide essential insight into this transition. Discussing
the schools of the 11th century from which the later schools developed is C. Stephen
Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950–1200
(Philadelphia, 1994). Treating the period of transition in the 12th century, with a particular
focus on the critics of the schools, is Stephen C. Ferruolo, The Origins of the University: The
Schools of Paris and Their Critics, 1100–1215 (Stanford, 1985). Greater detail on the masters of
the 12th century can be found in Richard Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unifijication
of Europe, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1995–2001). Commenting on monastic education throughout
the medieval period, but focusing particularly on the 12th century, is Jean Leclercq, Love
of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catherine Misrahi
(New York, 1982).
2 Constant Mews, “Hildegard and the Schools,” in Context, p. 110.
3 The serious study of Hildegard’s sources was inaugurated by Hans Liebeschütz’s
monograph Das allegorische Weltbild der Heiligen Hildegard von Bingen (Leipzig, 1930).
Since that time, no scholar has done more to further our knowledge of Hildegard’s sources
than Peter Dronke. Among his many contributions, one can point fijirst to his introduction