A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

intertextuality in hildegard’s works 147
represents not only virginity but also the eternality of the Trinity. Hildegard
expresses the eternality of God the Father in the Explanatio de Regula
Sancti Benedicti, where she describes the turning wheel as the power
of God, which gave the law to Moses and the Rule to Benedict.53 In the
Explanatio Symboli Sancti Athanasii, Hildegard explains, “Also the Father is
eternal, in that eternity that never began, and in the likeness of a spinning
wheel in which neither a beginning nor an end is observed.”54 This symbolism
is a key part of her commentary on the Athanasian Creed, which
underscores Hildegard’s theology of the eternality of the three persons of
the Trinity.55 Hildegard uses similar language to describe the divinity in the
Liber diuinorum operum as having “neither beginning or end.” The wheel
with no beginning or end represents the power of God.56 Moreover, the
idea that the circle represents divine eternality is present in Scivias 2.2,
where the magistra describes the blue fijigure of Christ within two bands of
concentric circles, which represent the other two persons of the Trinity.57
Likewise, in O Verbum Patris, song 70 in the Symphonia, Hildegard
describes the Word as present at the inception of the world, and “in the
circle of a wheel.”58 She then develops the concept of the circle as the
manner in which the Word works, creating and sustaining the cosmos.
And you worked
As in the likeness of a wheel
Encircling all things
Which has no beginning
Nor is it destroyed in an end.59
Hence the magistra ties this image of the eternal divine circle to creation
and incarnation, the eternality of both Father and Son.60
53 De reg. Bened., p. 68, ll. 17–20.
54 Expl. Symb., p. 118, ll. 269–71: “Eternus quoque Pater est, in illa scilicet eternitate que
nunquam incepit, et in similitudine circumeuntis rote in qua nec principium nec fijinis
conspicitur.”
55 Speaking New Mysteries, pp. 163–69, 295–96.
56 Diu. operum 1.4.11, p. 143, ll. 6–8.
57 Scivias 2.2, pp. 125–26, ll. 31–63. Bernard McGinn comments on Hildegard’s images of
the Trinity in “Theologians as Trinitarian Iconographers,” in The Mind’s Eye: Art and Theological
Argument in the Middle Ages, eds. Anne-Marie Bouché and Jefffrey F. Hamburger
(Princeton, 2006), pp. 186–207.
58 Symph., 70, p. 473, ll. 1–4: “O Verbum Patris / in lumen prime aurore / in circulo rote
es, / omnia in diuina ui operans.” Translation of the Symphonia here and elsewhere, unless
otherwise noted, is by Travis Stevens.
59 Ibid., ll. 10–14: “et operatus es / quasi in similitudine rote / cuncta circueuntis, / que
inicium non accepit / nec in fijine prostrata est.”
60 Speaking New Mysteries, pp. 20–21, 187, 260, 263, 272, 277.