A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

THE THEOLOGY OF REPENTANCE:
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIBER VITE MERITORUM*
Susanne Ruge
The Liber Scivias is described as a “Summa theologiae in a series of illuminations”
in works written as early as those by scholars such as Baillet and
Liebeschütz.1 This is a description that emphasizes the particular interplay
between word and image in Hildegard’s fijirst visionary text. Michael
Zöller and Jörg Ulrich have also made reference to this phenomenon in
more recent years.2 Zöller emphasizes that a summa in the 12th century
did not necessarily refer to a summa quaestionum in the more narrow
scholastic meaning, but rather could refer to a “representation of salvation
and salvation history in its entirety.”3 Additionally, “the summa is shorthand
for an encyclopedic, synthesizing, and pedagogical undertaking, an
ordo that offfers a systematic presentation of God and the world in their
relationship to each other.”4
The same can also be said about the Liber vite meritorum. In this work
as well, the entirety of salvation history is unfolded for the reader as God,
humankind, and the cosmos are represented in their interconnected relationships
from a pedagogical point of view. Regularly recurring themes
in the visionary interpretations include descriptions of visions that portray
the afterlife, particularly purgatory, as well as dialogues between virtues
and vices to like efffect. Yet the most important theme may well be the
concrete instructions for penitential behavior that appear at the respective
ends of the fijirst fijive of the six total sections, and which are expressly
* Translated by Rebecca L. Garber.
1 See Louis Baillet, “Les Miniatures du ‘Scivias’ de Sainte Hildegarde conservé à la bibliothèque
de Wiesbaden,” Monuments et Mémoires 19 (1911): 49–149, 58; Hans Liebeschütz,
Das allegorische Weltbild der Heiligen Hildegard von Bingen, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg
16 (Leipzig, 1930), p. 10.
2 Jörg Ulrich, “Vision bei Hildegard von Bingen. Beobachtungen zur Vita Gottfrieds und
Theoderichs und zu den Visionsschriften Hildegards,” Kerygma und Dogma 47.1 (2001):
14–29.
3 Michael Zöller, Gott weist seinem Volk seine Wege. Die theologische Konzeption des
‘Liber Scivias’ der Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179), Tübinger Studien zur Theologie und
Philosophie 11 (Tübingen, 1997), p. 533.
4 Zöller, Gott weist seinem Volk, p. 533.