A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

114 justin a. stover
many of you know.”23 This is a serious charge: not only are there benighted
heretics whom the masters ought to instruct, but heresy lurks even among
the masters themselves. These heretics “do not see and do not wish to
know that they are rational through the breath of life,” and as a result,
“in a rational man, there is a likeness to a prone beast.”24 Reason is the
issue at stake: these heretics, scholastics included, refuse to realize that
it is only through God that they are rational. Hildegard was not alone in
connecting scholars with Cathars and other heretics. William of St Thierry
(who will be discussed below) accused the famous French scholar William
of Conches of Manichaeanism around 1140,25 and Alan of Lille, writing
before 1160, linked the doctrines of Plato, still very popular in the schools,
with a Manichaeanism that “flourishes still among very many people.”26
“You scholars,” Hildegard continues, “ruminate on Scripture more for the
sake of fame and fortune than for God.”27 This too echoes a common contemporary
criticism of the masters of the schools. John of Salisbury pointedly
notes in his Policraticus (c.1159) that for many scholars “philosophy
23 Idem: “Scientia scripturarum uobis proposita est, ut in illa uelut in solari radio unumquodque
periculum cognoscatis, et ut per doctrinam uestram in infijidelitate errantium
hominum ut luna in tenebras noctis luceatis, qui ut Saducei sunt et heretici ac ut alii multi
in fijide errantes, qui inter uos inclusi sunt, et quos etiam multi ex uobis sciunt, prona facie
pecoribus et bestiis similes existentes.”
24 Idem: “Nam nec uident nec scire uolunt quod per spiraculum uite racionales sunt,
nec capita sua ad illum eleuant, qui eos creauit et qui eos per quinque sensus regit, quos
ipsis donauit. Quare ergo in racionali homine similitudo proni animalis est, quod per
flatum aeris suscitatur, quem iterum exalat, et sic fijinitur, et quod scientiam non habet
aliam, quam quod sentit et ferientem timet, et quod per se nichil operatur, nisi ad hoc
impellatur?”
25 William of St Thierry, De erroribus Guillelmi de Conchis, ed. Paul Verdeyen, CCCM
89A (Turnhout, 2007), p. 8: “Vbi in altero quidem stultorum quorumdam philosophorum
uidetur sententiam sequi, dicentium nihil prorsus esse praeter corpora et corporea, non
aliud esse Deum in mundo quam concursum elementorum et temperaturam naturae, et
hoc ipsum esse animam in corpore; in altero manifestus Manichaeus est, dicens animam
hominis a bono Deo creatam, corpus uero a principe tenebrarum.” Just a few years after
this letter, Bernard would embark upon a campaign against the Manichaeans in Cologne.
See Brunn, Des contestataires aux “Cathares,” pp. 136–78.
26 Alan of Lille, Summa ‘Quoniam homines,’ ed. Palémon Glorieux, Archives d’histoire
doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 20 (1953), pp. 119–359, 1.5–6. On the perceived connection
between Platonism and heresy in the 12th-century schools, see my dissertation,
“Reading Plato in the Twelfth Century: A Study of the Varieties of Plato’s Reception in the
Latin West Before 1215” (Diss., Harvard University, 2011).
27 Expl. Symb., p. 128: “Vos autem qui in magistrali doctrina uelut luna et stelle audientibus
estis, quibus tamen magis propter honorem et diuicias seculi quam propter Deum
scripturam ruminatis.”