A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

the medical, the magical, and the miraculous 259
son was the Swedish bishop Siward of Uppsala, who served as head of the
monastery at Rastede from 1142 to 1157 and whose impressive library may
have allowed Hildegard to enhance her medical knowledge.46 It also can
be posited, but likewise not proven, that Hildegard could have had the
opportunity to become acquainted with the latest theories regarding the
healing arts as well as novel remedies from her own travels.
Hildegard’s writings reflect not only the perspective of a healer but also
frequently that of a person seeking to be healed. 47 She includes numerous
references to illnesses and sufffering that she experienced in the course
of her lifetime; these affflictions, especially those that accompany her
visions, have been the focus of much speculation and considerable scholarly
debate.48 Although physical causes for her sicknesses and even for her
visionary experiences may be proposed, there appears to be for Hildegard
an unambiguous connection between her spiritual and corporeal states:
religious weakness or failing can manifest itself with physical affflictions.
The Physica and the Cause et cure provide glimpses into the nature of 12thcentury
monastic medicine; just as importantly, they introduce Hildegard’s
perception of the relationship between the natural world and that
which lies beyond it. Florence Glaze notes that Hildegard is, “as a medical
thinker, clearly interested in the broader universal context through which
she might understand and explain the reasons for diseases, both cosmic
and microcosmic, as well as revealing the means by which diseases might
be vanquished.”49 Extensively developed in the natural sciences works,
such reasoning is present in Hildegard’s other writings as well, as will be
examined below. The prevalence of allusions to illness and healing, both
46 Johannes May, Die heilige Hildegard von Bingen aus dem Orden des heiligen Benedikt
(1098–1179): Ein Lebensbild (Kempten, 1911), p. 37, and Erich Wasmann, “Die heilige Hildegard
von Bingen als Naturforscherin,” in Festschrift Georg von Hertling zum siebzigsten
Geburtstage am 31. August 1913 (Kempten, 1913), p. 462. Glaze, “Medical Writer: ‘Behold the
Human Creature,’” p. 130, comments on what medical literature Hildegard might have had
at her disposal.
47 See, for example, Klaus-Dietrich Fischer, “Hildegard von Bingen. Kranke und Heilerin,”
Das Mittelalter 10 (2005): 20–34.
48 One frequently cited theory is that of Charles Singer, who claims that Hildegard’s
visions exhibit characteristics of scintillating scotoma, a visual aura commonly associated
with certain kinds of migraines, in “The Scientifijic Views,” pp. 1–55, especially pp. 51–55.
Oliver Sacks revisits Singer’s ideas in Migraine. Revised and Expanded (Berkeley, 1992),
pp. 299–301.
49 Glaze, “Medical Writer: ‘Behold the Human Creature,’” p. 133.