A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

130 justin a. stover
violation of traditional boundaries, and its pride and love of novelty.94 In
short, the monks and nuns held that
. . . theological research was approaching the dangerous point at which it
might escape the limits set by faith. In trying to submit God’s mysteries to
reason, one could be tempted to forget their transcendency and yield to a
kind of naturalism.95
The kinship between this view and the thoughts expressed in the De
erroribus are obvious and overwhelming: the respect for tradition, concern
about novelty, and the preeminent place of faith in rational understanding.
These themes render William of St Thierry’s thought as typical
of monastic opposition to the schools, as Leclercq has argued.96
Hildegard’s Idea of Rationality
Hildegard shares with William and other monastic authors a profound
interest in the proper role and scope of human reason. In her letter to the
fijive abbots of Bellevaux, Cherlieu, Clairefontaine, La-Charité, and Bithaine
(c.1157), Hildegard explains the dual nature of racionalitas:
For God gave rationality to man. For through the word of God man is rational.
An irrational creature, however, is like a sound. So in man God established
all creation. But to rationality he granted two wings, of which the right
signifijies good knowledge, and the left evil. By these man is like a bird.97
Both the wings are necessary for man to fly to wisdom, as Hildegard
explains in another letter, but the wing of evil knowledge must minister
to the wing of good knowledge.98 Likewise, in the Liber diuinorum operum,
94 Leclercq, Love of Learning, pp. 193–297.
95 Ibid., p. 208.
96 Ibid., p. 208. A reevaluation of the relationship between school and cloister in the
12th and 13th centuries is currently taking place. In a recent article, Brian Noell surveys this
change, concluding that at the very least a modifijied version of the Leclercq thesis is still
generally accepted; see “Scholarship and Activism at Cîteaux in the Age of Innocent III,”
Viator 28 (2007): 21–23. For a contrary view, see Thomas Head, “‘Monastic’ and ‘ Scholastic’
Theology: A Change of Paradigm?” in Paradigms in Medieval Thought, eds. Nancy van
Deusen and Alvin E. Ford (Lewiston, Pa., 1990), pp. 127–37.
97 Epistolarium, I, 70R, p. 155: “Deus enim rationalitatem homini dedit. Nam per uerbum
Dei homo rationalis est. Irrationalis autem creatura uelut sonus est. Sic Deus omnem creaturam
in homine constituit. Sed rationalitati duas alas dedit, quarum dextera ala bonam
scientiam, sinistra autem malam scientiam signifijicat. In his homo est volatilis sit.”
98 Ibid., II, 103R, p. 263 (to Guibert of Gembloux), “Sic etiam homo cum duabus alis
rationalitatis, scilicet cum scientia boni et mali, uolat. Dextera ala scientia bona est et