A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

hildegard of bingen: a history of reception 281
present schism. This request elevated Hildegard to the role of authority on
current ecclesiastical politics.
With regard to other contemporary authors, it is impossible to use textual
citations to prove a claim, proposed by Joan Gibson, about a possible
reception of Hildegard’s works within the Hortus deliciarum by Herrad of
Hohenburg (c.1125–1196).18 Various motifs and parallels in phrasing that
Margot Schmidt has found in Hildegard’s visionary works and the Fließendes
Licht der Gottheit by Mechthild of Magdeburg (1210–1285) are likewise
problematic.19 In contrast, it can be proven that Elisabeth of Schönau
(1129–1164) was in epistolary contact with Hildegard and that she confijigured
her Liber uiarum Dei after the model of Hildegard’s Scivias.
Apocalyptic excerpts from the Scivias (3.11.25–27, 30–32, and 39) appear
in a Low German revision of the Elucidarium by Honorius Augustodunensis
(c.1070–c.1150).20 It has been assumed that the borrowings were
taken from Gebeno of Eberbach’s Pentachronon.21 They indicate monastic
reform tendencies in the Windesheimer congregation. The excerpts were
compiled at the end of the 14th century or the beginning of the 15th, and
provide modern scholars with the earliest example for vernacular reception
of the Scivias, in this case in lower Germany.
Hildegard’s letter to Werner of Kirchheim was also initially propagated
via the Pentachronon. The letter was translated into German and developed
into a prototype for other admonitory writings of this type, that is,
the model of a vision received while asleep (In lectu egritudinis diu iacens).
The German version appears within the context of a collection of prophetic
18 Joan Gibson, “Herrad of Hohenburg,” in A History of Women Philosophers, ed. Mary
Ellen Waithe, vol. 2 (Dordrecht, 1989), pp. 85–98. Fiona Grifffijiths, The Garden of Delights.
Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia,
2007).
19 Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fließende Licht der Gottheit. 2nd revised translation
with introduction and commentary by Margot Schmidt (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1995),
passim.
20 Strasbourg, Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire, Ms 2101, fols 1r–64va. The manuscript
originated in the Augustinian monastery of canons regular in Frenswegen and was
copied by the lay brother Arnoldus of Almelo in 1468–1469. See Dagmar Gottschall, Das
‘Elucidarium’ des Honorius Augustodunensis. Untersuchungen zu seiner Überlieferungs- und
Rezeptionsgeschichte im deutschsprachigen Raum mit Ausgabe der niederdeutschen Übersetzung
(Tübingen, 1992), pp. 161–295, especially the passages concerning the Scivias, pp. 260–
265 and 273. Concerning the identity of Honorius, see Valerie I.J. Flint, “The Chronology of
the Works of Honorius of Augustodunensis,” Revue Bénédictine 82 (1972): 215–42. Valerie I.J.
Flint, “The Place and Purpose of the Works of Honorius of Augustodunensis,” Revue Bénédictine
87 (1977): 97–127.
21 Epistolarium, II, pp. 333–37.