A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

222 susanne ruge
linked to the particular vices portrayed.5 The regularity of the structure
indicates an intentional assembly of textual genres from the outset and
provides the Vite mer. with a very unique profijile.
Unlike the Scivias, the Vite mer. contains only one central, visionary
image: A man stands in the cosmos, his head in the clouds of the ether
and his feet above the waters of the abyss. All other visionary descriptions
and auditions that appear over the course of the text can be and
are interpreted through this foundational image. With respect to the Vite
mer., then, one must consistently refer to a summa imago.
The following essay will more fully examine this particular profijile,
especially its relation to the structure of the work and the interplay of
the individual genres. To this end, the fijirst part provides a description
of the visionary image and an explanation of how the structure of the text
results from it. In a second part, the foundational intent of the work will
be teased out of the regularly recurring formulaic admonishments. This
leads to the primary focus of this essay, which is a detailed depiction of
the various textual genres and their function for the composition of the
totality of the Vite mer.
Visionary Image and the Structure of the Liber vite meritorum
Since the entire Vite mer. is structured around the visionary image depicted
at the beginning of the text, it is vital to the reader’s understanding that
this image be described and related to the foundational structure of the
text. The image presents a gigantic man who stands amid the cosmos. In
Hildegard’s words:
And I saw a man of such great height that he extended from the tops of the
clouds in heaven to the abyss. He stood such that his head and shoulders
rise into the pure ether; from his shoulders to his thighs, he is wrapped in
a shining cloud; from his thighs to knees, he is enveloped in the air of this
world; from the knees to his calves, he stands immersed in the earth; and
from his calves to the soles of his feet, he rests in the waters of the abyss,
however, such that he remained over the abyss.6
5 The Liber vite meritorum (Vite mer.) consists of six sections; the structure of the entire
work is described in part 1 below.
6 Vite mer., 1, p. 10, ll. 4–11: “ET VIDI uirum tante proceritatis, quod a summitate
nubium celi usque in abyssum pertingebat, ita quod ab humeris suis sursum supra nubes
in serenissimo ethere erat; et ab humeris deorsum ad femora sua sub eisdem nubibus in
alia quadam candida nube; et a femoribus ad genua sua in terreno aere; et a genibus ad