A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

138 kienzle and stevens
commenting on the prophet’s opening discourse.1 Moreover, in Scivias,
the magistra cites the prophet six times. The voice of God, conveyed by
Hildegard, speaks of “my servant” Ezekiel three times and refers to his
prophetic revelation as many times, whether as simply “showing” or “mystical
vision” or “speaking in God’s spirit with mystical signifijication.” The
magistra echoes the warnings the prophet uttered against sinful humanity
from what he saw with his mystica visione.2 She bolsters her own claim to
prophetic authority as God’s voice implicitly compares her and her message
to the prophet.
In the magistra’s second visionary work, Liber vite meritorum, she
names the prophet twice, and in the third, the Liber diuinorum operum,
not at all. A survey of her works beyond the three treatises shows that the
seer names the prophet in her letters and in the Expositiones euangeliorum,
but not in her other writings. Nonetheless, the image of the wheel,
whose theological meanings often echo her exegesis of Ezekiel’s vision,
appears in the Liber diuinorum operum, as well as in the De regula Sancti
Benedicti, the Explanatio Symboli Sancti Athanasii, the Symphonia, and the
Cause et cure. The wheel denotes a range of meanings, which will be studied
below, from the workings of the human body, at times related to the
divine, to the place of the human being in the cosmos and the human’s
relationship to the Trinity.3
1 Scivias, pp. 3–4; Vite mer., pp. 8–9; Diu. operum, pp. 45–46. Gregory the Great, Homiliae
in Hiezechihelem prophetam, ed. Marcus Adriaen, CCSL 142 (Turnhout, 1971), 1.2.2,
p. 17, ll. 21–36, at 21–22, 24–30, and 32–36: “Et namque sermo coniunctionis est, et scimus
quia non coniungitur sermo subsequens nisi sermoni praecedenti. . . . Qua in re intuendum
est quia sicut nos corporalia, sic prophetae sensus spiritalia aspiciunt, eisque et illa sunt
praesentia quae nostrae ignorantiae absentia uidentur. Vnde fijit ut in mente prophetarum
ita coniuncta sint exterioribus interiora, quatenus simul utraque uideant, simulque in eis
fijiat et intus uerbum quod audiunt, et foras quod dicunt. . . . Quia hoc uerbum quod foris
protulit illi uerbo quod intus audierat coniunxit. Continuauit ergo uerba quae protulit
uisioni intimae, et idcirco incipit dicens: Et factum est. Subiungit enim hoc quod exterius
loqui inchoat, ac si et illud foris sit quod intus uidet.” See Peter Dronke, “Introduction,”
in Diu. operum, pp. xxxv–xxxvi; Christel Meier, “Prophetentum als literarische Existenz:
Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179); ein Portrait,” in Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 1: Vom
Mittelalter bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts, ed. Gisela Brinker-Gabler (Munich, 1988),
pp. 76–87; Christel Meier, “Ildegarde di Bingen: Profezia ed esistenza letteraria,” Cristianesimo
nella storia 17 (1996): 271–303.
2 Scivias 1.2, p. 17, ll. 189–90; Scivias 1.4, p. 75, ll. 477–79; Scivias 1.5, pp. 97–98, ll. 138–39;
Scivias 2.4, p. 170, ll. 403–04: “ut in mystica uisione sua Ezekiel dicit.” Scivias 2.7, p. 313, ll.
212–15; Scivias 3.1, p. 343, ll. 526–27; Scivias 3.1, p. 344, ll. 561–62: “sicut etiam idem Ezekiel
in spiritu meo regi Tyri sub mystica signifijicatione dicit: ‘Omnes qui uiderint te in gentibus
obstupescent super te.’”
3 There do not seem to be any echoes of the Boethian wheel here. Peter Dronke identifijies
two echoes of Boethius in the Diu. operum, but they do not involve the wheel, Diu.
operum 1.2.39, p. 106, l. 19, and 3.5.8, p. 419, ll. 76–78.