A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

hildegard of bingen: a history of reception 283
the monastic lectio during meals. The manuscript bears witness to Hildegard’s
influence among the Cistercians of Brabant. Further, because the
Villers Abbey was founded by Bernard of Clairvaux in 1148, the codex can
also be considered a physical expression of the high esteem with which
Hildegard was held by Bernard’s inner circle.
One reform text in particular, which circulated extensively under Hildegard’s
name, is generally referenced by its incipit, Quamvis hominis. It
was used by Dietrich of Nieheim, among others. The text concerns the
emergence of a Rex romanorum and the reformation of the Church during
the time of the Great Schism (1378–1418) prior to the Council of Basel-
Ferrara-Florence (1341–1349).
Traces of Hildegard’s influence have also been found in the works by
the Strasbourg Dominican John Tauler (c.1300–1361). A rumor ascribes to
the friar the preface that appeared in the collection of Hildegard’s letters
published by John Blanckwalt in Cologne in 1566. In addition, Tauler
preached a sermon in 1339 to the nuns at the Dominican convent of St
Gertrude in which he cited individual images from the Scivias.23 One of
the motifs Tauler used in his sermon was subsequently frescoed on the
wall of the convent refectory: the enthroned Godhead, which appears in
the fijirst vision of the illuminated Scivias. Tauler’s vernacular sermon also
referred to the pericope from Luke 19:5 (In domo tua oportet me manere)
and serves as a rare example for a history of the reception of the images
from the Scivias, as opposed to the text. In addition, it also bears witness
to the reception of Hildegard’s works among German mystics.
The itinerant preacher Henry of Nördlingen (c.1310–1387 post quem non),
one of Tauler’s direct contemporaries and acquaintances, also cited the
authority of Hildegard, or pseudo-Hildegard, in a letter to the Dominican
nun Margareta Ebner (1291–1351) written in 1349. The subject of the letter
revolved around the question of whether the “Friends of God” should warn
one another about the coming disaster. The context for this debate was
a contemporaneous outbreak of bubonic plague. Henry invoked pseudo-
Hildegard and afffijirmed that those with information should warn others
about a calamity that threatened. A text with the rubric, Vom Tod und
letzten Gericht, held by the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (Vienna,
ÖNB, Cod. 2739, fols 195v–200r) likewise appeals to pseudo-Hildegard for
authority. The Low German work sketches out the specifijic types of death
23 Jefffrey Hamburger, Bücher der Menschheit. Johannes Tauler über den Scivias Hildegards
von Bingen, trans. Michael Embach and Christoph Gerhardt, 2nd ed. (Trier, 2007).