A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

240 susanne ruge
levels do not difffer fundamentally; music, pleasant perfumes, light, and
wondrous clothing are common to all. However, there remain qualitative
diffferences, which appear primarily in the magnifijicence and adornment of
the clothing. The fact that those who lived virginal lives appear at the highest
level of this hierarchy may have served to confijirm to monastic readers,
monks as well as nuns, that they are already on the correct path.
This afffijirmation must have been especially gratifying for the nuns at the
Rupertsberg monastery, as they wore white garments and diverse adornments
in their unveiled hair.63 If one considers as well that Hildegard’s
own compositions went far beyond contemporary musical styles in length,
tonal range, and ornamentation,64 then it becomes clear that the liturgical
prayers for Hildegard’s nuns must have represented an anticipation of the
heavenly joys. At another point, Hildegard also states that “singing praises
of God” represented an “echo of the heavenly harmony.”65
The extensive amount of detail and the vivid depictions of the heavenly
joys have the efffect of remaining in the minds of Hildegard’s readers and
listeners. They then present a continuous motivation for remaining on the
arduous path to eternal life.
The Path to Life—The Catalogues of Penance
The penitential catalogues appear at the end of every one of the fijirst fijive
parts, thereby providing an end point for each. On the other hand, these
sections are also the shortest: they often consist of a few sentences.
Whoever follows such vices in this world, but then desires to put aside the
whisperings of this diabolic art and shudders with horror before the punishments
meted out to this vice, he should chastise his flesh, according to the
type and degree of his transgressions, through fasting and avoiding expensive
beverages, according to the judgment of his judge.66
63 See the letter from Tenxwind of Andernach addressed to Hildegard in Epistolarium, I,
52, pp. 125–27, at p. 126.
64 Regarding Hildegard’s music, see the essays in this volume by Tova Leigh-Choate,
William T. Flynn, and Margot E. Fassler, pp. 163–92 and 193–220, as well as Barbara Stühlmeyer,
Die Gesänge Hildegards von Bingen. Eine musikologische, theologische und kulturhistorische
Untersuchung, Studien und Materialien zur Musikwissenschaft 30 (Hildesheim,
2003).
65 Epistolarium, I, 23, p. 64, ll. 127–29: “sic etiam canticum laudum secundum celestem
harmoniam per Spiritum Sanctum in Ecclesia radicatum est.”
66 Vite mer., 1.88, pp. 53–54, ll. 1502–07: “Sed qui in seculo huic uitio insistunt, si suasionem
huius diabolice artis neglexerint et si penas eiusdem uitii abhorruerint, carnem