A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

intertextuality in hildegard’s works 155
the same wording in another letter (173R), where she relays God’s voice,
saying: “I, the turning wheel, accept your response, I who live without
beginning and without end.” Moreover, in Scivias, the seer describes the
one God, without beginning and without end, who is in eternity.92
Jerome, like Ambrose, interprets the motion of the wheels in Ezekiel
in connection with the relationship of the Old and New Testaments and
the spread of the Gospel both in the world and in the inner person. As
Angela Russell Christman observes, these are standard interpretations
of the wheels by the early 5th century.93 Jerome writes, “And the wheel
in the wheel, is either the joining of the two testaments, which Jacob’s
ladder indicates, and Isaiah’s tongs and the double-edged sword, or the
coherence of the Gospel to itself.”94 Hildegard is familiar with this exegetical
concept and employs the motif of the unity of the testaments when
she asserts that the Old Testament, namely the book of Ezekiel, prefijigured
the New in the representation of virginity.95
Gregory the Great expands the notion of the turning wheel of Ezekiel
as the link between the two testaments. He sees the “spirit moving” as
distinct from the “spirit of life in the wheels” (Ezek. 1:20–21), where his
predecessors had seen only the Holy Spirit. For Gregory, the “spirit” designates
the saints who understand from Scripture how to lead a moral life;
and the “spirit of life” represents the Holy Spirit. Gregory provides examples
of various people inspired to virtuous action by the Spirit, namely
40.6, p. 354, l. 17; 99.5, p. 585, l. 5; 104.3, p. 603, l. 33; 105.8, p. 607, l. 8; Alcuin of York, Commentaria
in sancti Iohannis Euangelium, PL 100:867A (Paris, 1863); Paschasius Radbertus,
De fijide, spe, et caritate, ed. Beda Paulus, CCCM 97 (Turnhout, 1990), 1.8, p. 30, ll. 912–13;
and Expositio in Matheo, ed. Beda Paulus, CCCM 56 (Turnhout, 1990), 4, p. 385, l. 782;
Rupert of Deutz, Commentaria in evangelium Sancti Iohannis, ed. Rhaban Haacke, CCCM
9 (Turnhout, 1969), 5, p. 270, ll. 1204–05; also De victoria verbi Dei. Monumenta germaniae
historica, ed. Rhaban Haacke, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 5 (Weimar,
1970), 2.9, p. 56, ll. 20–21.
92 Epistolarium, II, 173R, p. 393, ll. 17–21: “Et dominus eius ipsi respondit: Serue bone,
responsum tuum, me circueunte rota, sic accipio, dicens: Ego qui sine initio et sine fijine
uiuo, te in magnis honoribus supra omnia que amasti ponere uolo, nec mea possibilitas
te condemnabit, quia per penitentiam uocasti me.” See also Epistolarium, II, 84 R, p. 194,
ll. 157–59: “Virginitas quippe uetera sufffert ac noua sustinet, et ipsa radix et fundamentum
omnium bonorum est, quia semper et semper cum illo fuit qui sine initio et sine fijine
est.” Scivias 3.1.16, p. 345, ll. 593–94: “non est nisi unus Deus sine initio et sine fijine, in
aeternitate.”
93 Christman, What Did Ezekiel See?, p. 47.
94 Jerome, Commentarii in Hiezechielem, I, 1.15–18, p. 20, ll. 487–90: “Rota quoque in rota
vel duorum iunctura testamentorum et quod indicat scala Iacob et forceps Isaiae et gladius
bis acutus vel evangelista sibi cohaerentia.” Glossa ordinaria, II, p. 225.
95 See note 86 above.