A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

140 kienzle and stevens
monks at Villers, sought the magistra’s opinion on 38 problems of scriptural
interpretation, to which she responded with the Solutiones triginta
octo quaestionum.9
Moreover, while the magistra employs the form of a letter here, the text
clearly presents itself in a sermon-like discourse that recalls a mixed genre,
sometimes called the sermo epistolaris.10 Hildegard punctuates the letter
with a number of simple questions, asking repeatedly, “What is said?”
(Quid dicitur?). The questions engage the reader in a sort of exegetical
conversation that places the letter between written and oral discourse.
The magistra structures the core of this sermo epistolaris around the
four animals described in Ezekiel 1 and 10 and by John the Evangelist in
Revelation 4:6–9: the lion, the calf, the human-faced creature, and the
flying eagle.11 The letter thus offfers an exegesis of the relevant passage in
Revelation as much as it does of Ezekiel.
The magistra asserts the standard medieval interpretation that the four
creatures represent the four evangelists.12 She discusses at some length
the roles of angels and ministers of God, as well as God’s miracles, and
presence in divine fijire. Hildegard uses the word ignis several times here,
9 The Solutiones are contained within the Epistolae, fols 328ra–434ra, Wiesbaden,
Hessische Landesbibliothek 2; PL 197:1037–54. On the content, see Bartlett, “Commentary,
Polemic and Prophecy,” pp. 153–65; and on the genre, see Nikolaus M. Häring, “Commentary
and Hermeneutics,” in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, eds. Robert L.
Benson and Giles Constable with Carol Lanham, Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching
26 (Toronto, 1991), pp. 173–200, at p. 177.
10 See Beverly Mayne Kienzle, “The Twelfth-Century Monastic Sermon,” in The Sermon,
ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge occidental, fasc. 81–83
(Turnhout, 2000), pp. 275, 280. Sermons, letters, and exegetical discourses showed common
characteristics in 12th-century monastic circles. On monastic letters, see Giles Constable,
Letters and Letter Collections, Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge occidental, fasc.
17 (Turnhout, 1976); Beverly Mayne Kienzle, “New Introduction,” The Letters of St. Bernard
of Clairvaux, trans. Bruno Scott James (Stroud, 1998), pp. vii–xvii.
11 Rev. 4:6: “Et in conspectu sedis tamquam mare vitreum simile cristallo et in medio
sedis et in circuitu sedis quattuor animalia plena oculis ante et retro.” Exegesis of the
animals in the books of these two visionary prophets dates back to Irenaeus of Lyons and
is reinforced by Augustine. See Angela Russell Christman, What Did Ezekiel See? Christian
Exegesis of Ezekiel’s Vision of the Chariot from Irenaeus to Gregory the Great (Leiden, 2005),
p. 16. Gregory does not connect the four creatures in Ezekiel to Revelation; see Gregory the
Great, Homiliae in Hiezechihelem prophetam, I, 6.10–17, pp. 72–77.
12 Letters, 1, 84R, p. 183; Epistolarium, I, 84R, p. 190, ll. 12–18: “In medio sedis et in circuitu
sedis quattuor animalia, plena oculis ante et retro. Quod dicitur: In fortitudine potestatis
Dei, qui Deus et homo est, et in omni parte quo potestas ipsius extenditur, quattuor euangelistis
imbuti fijideles Dei ruminantes et plenitudinem circumspectionis uirtutum habentes
esse debent, ita quod uideant unde facti processerint et quod etiam uideant quid futuri
sint.” See note 10 above on Gregory the Great’s cementing of this interpretation and on its
representation in medieval art; see also Fromaget, Le symbolisme des quatre vivants.