A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

intertextuality in hildegard’s works 151
1. Unless it turns around the wheel that is life, it does not live. When both
animals and other creatures are formed in secret, they can be said to be
born; but when they have touched the air or the growth of greenness
or the vigor of fortitude, they are said to be reborn.74
2, 3. What is born, that is, brought forth from flesh is flesh, knowing nothing,
because it lacks form—the wheel, namely life; and what is born from
the Spirit, either by air or by growth, is spirit, because the wheel that is
life is complete power.75
4. The spirit blows, giving life because the wheel of life which I touch neither
stands nor moves nor flies without me, where it will, when it knows
it ought to be so.76
Hildegard speaks in the voice of Jesus answering Nicodemus, and in the
fourth citation she adopts the fijirst-person discourse of the scriptural passage
to grant added force to her teaching. By employing the imagery of the
wheel, the magistra brings together the wheel’s symbolic meaning as life
with that of the life-giving Holy Spirit, which follows a circular course.
Finally, Hildegard associates the wheel with understanding, knowledge,
and wisdom. In the Liber vite meritorum, she speaks of the wheel of knowledge
that turns within an individual human being, influencing the choice
between good and evil.77 Similarly, in Expositio 52, Hildegard interprets
Luke 18:10–14, the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, as a story
about the knowledge of good and evil, scientia boni et mali. The former,
represented by the Pharisee, lists for God all the great things he does:
I fast twice on the Sabbath; I cut offf the two-tongued speech from your sanctuary.
I give a tenth of everything I own; in the Ten Commandments I offfer
you praise, who are the one God, from every circle of my intellect, by which
I know you.78
74 Ibid., p. 284, ll. 28–31: “non potest introire in regnum Dei, id est nisi rota quae uita
est eam circumducat, non uiuit, quia et animalia et aliae creaturae, cum formantur in
abdito, nata dici possunt, cum uero aerem tetigerint uel incrementum uiriditatis aut uim
fortitudinis, renata dicuntur.”
75 Ibid., p. 284, ll. 31–35. “Quod natum est, productum est de carne, caro est, nichil sciens,
quia forma indiget, rota scilicet uita, et quod natum est de Spiritu, spiritus est, uel aere uel
incremento uiuifijicatum, quoniam rota quae uita est, tota potestas est.”
76 Ibid., 35, p. 284, ll. 39–40: “Spiritus ubi uult, id est ubi nouit sic esse debere, spirat,
uiuifijicando, quia rota uitae quam tango nec stat, nec uadit, nec uolat sine me.”
77 Vite mer., 3.19, p. 405.
78 Expo. Euang., 52, p. 321, ll. 17–20: “Ieiuno, scilicet abscido, bis, bilinguem loquelam, in
sabbato, uidelicet a sanctuario tuo; decimas do, id est in decem preceptis laudem offfero,
qui unus Deus es, omnium quae possideo, scilicet de omni circulo intellectus mei in quo
te scio.”