A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

148 kienzle and stevens
Likewise, in O Fili dilectissime, the following poem (71) of the same
cycle, she speaks in the voice of the Virgin Mary:
O beloved Son,
Whom I bore in my flesh
From the strength of the turning wheel
Of holy divinity.61
Mary addresses her son, describing his conception as resulting from the
wheel of divinity. The wheel of divine power brings about incarnation,
the union of human and divine, and eventually salvation. Thus, in both
of these compositions from the Symphonia, Hildegard represents God’s
activity as similar to that of a turning wheel. In the fijirst case, she writes
of God’s creation of the cosmos and eternal involvement with it; in the
second, she describes the mystery of the incarnation through the voice of
the Virgin Mary, mother of Christ.
The wheel extends to the third person of the Trinity as well. The divine
strength described in O Fili dilectissime evokes the power of the Holy
Spirit. Moreover, in Expositio 9 on John 1:1–14, Hildegard describes those
who received the Word as being “led in a circle before others in miracles
in the light of the fijire of the Holy Spirit.”62 The Spirit’s power then is associated
with light, fijire, and the circular motion of the wheel. Furthermore,
this power illuminates Hildegard herself, as she evokes the wheels of the
prophet’s vision in Scivias and in Letter 84R, claiming prophetic authority
and echoing the warnings Ezekiel uttered against sinful humanity based
on what he saw in mystica signifijicatione and in mystica visione.63
The Wheel and Created Beings
Hildegard extends the complex symbolism of the turning wheel of Ezekiel
by employing it to encompass the human body as well as non-human creatures.
The magistra compares the brain to a wheel in the Liber diuinorum
operum, an analogy she also applies to the inner workings of the body, and
61 Symph., 71, p. 474, ll. 1–4.: “O Fili dilectissime, / quem genui in uisceribus meis / de
ui circueuntis rote / sancte diuinitatis.”
62 Expo. Euang., 9, p. 213, ll. 80–83: “ut rota in lumine ignis Sancti Spiritus in miraculis
pre aliis circumducti sunt: et ideo cognouerunt eum, quoniam et ipsi ut uentus in prophetia
et in aliis miraculis circumacti sunt.”
63 Scivias 2.4, p. 170, ll. 403–04: “ut in mystica uisione sua Ezekiel dicit.” 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.’”