A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

176 leigh-choate, flynn, and fassler
None of the songs dedicated to the persons of the Trinity can be dated
precisely, yet we know the period (around the late 1150s) when her idea
of a collection of songs in honor of “God and the saints” began to take
shape. Since liturgical celebration is inherently cyclic, much of Hildegard’s
repertory could have developed years after liturgical events, such as altar,
church, or chapel dedications. Even so, such events (to the extent that
they can be determined) may help explain the creation of various clusters
of songs in the repertory, such as the Scivias songs, the large Marian repertory
from the 1150s, and the later songs in honor of specifijic named saints.
Finally, although music and text seem to have been created together, the
redaction into pitch-secure notation appears to have been a project of
Hildegard’s fijinal years.
(Nam) O vos angeli—Scivias Text or Scivias Song?
The text of O vos angeli appears as the second part of the song text O gloriosissimi
lux uiuens angeli in honor of the angels in Hildegard’s Scivias 3.13,
where it is linked to the fijirst part through the awkward construction
Nam, O vos angeli.49 The two parts together present a coherent description
of the origin, fall, and character of the angelic orders, which closely
mirrors the order, argumentation, and content of Gregory the Great’s
Gospel Homily on Luke’s parables of the lost sheep and the lost drachma
(Lk. 15:3–10).50 Like all of Hildegard’s songs, they are also intimately connected
to her visionary works and the corresponding illuminations. Indeed,
in Scivias 3.13, Hildegard directs the reader to earlier visions in Scivias, stating
that within the heavenly symphonia she heard “all the meanings mentioned
before” (omnes praedictae signifijicationes).51 O gloriosissimi presents
a poetic summary of material fijirst treated in Scivias 1.2, and Nam, O vos
angeli largely summarizes material from Scivias 1.6, as well as from the
illuminations for Scivias 2.1–3.52 Since the two parts recapitulate material
for Saint Ursula and the Rhetoric of Twelfth-Century Women’s Monasticism (forthcoming).
For the visit of Philip, see Epistolarium, I, 16, pp. 48–49.
49 Scivias 3.13, p. 616.
50 Gunilla Iversen noted the relationship to Gregory’s text in “‘O vos angeli’: Hildegard’s
Lyrical and Visionary Texts on the Celestial Hierarchies in the Context of her Time,” in
Angesicht, pp. 87–113, at 106. William Flynn details the relationship in “Singing with the
Angels: Hildegard of Bingen’s Representations of Celestial Music,” in Conversations with
Angels: Essays Towards a History of Spiritual Communication, 1100–1700, ed. Joad Raymond
(Houndsmills, 2011), pp. 203–29.
51 Scivias 3.13, p. 614.
52 For more on the connections, see Flynn, “Singing with the Angels.”