A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

72 constant j. mews
Augustinian community at Andernach. This was home to the magistra
Tenxwind, a fijigure known to Hildegard who apparently objected to the
extravagant behavior she had heard was being followed by Hildegard’s
nuns at her established community of Rupertsberg, apparently soon after
its foundation c.1150. Tenxwind’s critique of the extravagant garb worn
by Hildegard’s nuns on this occasion matches the strict moralism of the
Speculum virginum, with its aspersions on extravagant dress.53 Hildegard
is likely to have known the work, with its emphasis on interior nobility
and cultivation of inward virtue. Yet even if she was excited by the
pedagogical possibility of using visual imagery to encourage her female
disciples to pursue a spiritual life, she also sought to develop a quite distinct
perspective that was not encouraged by the author of the Speculum
virginum, that of visionary experience. Whereas in the dialogues of the
Speculum virginum, Peregrinus provided learned commentary on illustrations
to edify Theodora, Hildegard preferred to present her own images
in the form of a vision.
Visions and the Cause of Religious Reform
In so doing, Hildegard found her most powerful authority in the writings
of Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, and above all John the Divine. She also drew
inspiration for her vision of Ecclesia from the Pastor Hermas, a 2nd-century
dream narrative known to the Fathers of the Church, which recognized
the legitimacy of prophecy within the Church but was not accorded full
canonical status within ecclesiastical tradition. There were other visionary
accounts to which she could have had access. A rare example of a visionary
account actually written by a woman in the early Church is that of
Perpetua (d. 203), preserved within the Passio SS. Perpetuae et Felicitatis.54
Most visionary accounts prior to the 12th century are, however, relatively
impersonal. They are reports about someone else’s encounter with
Christ or the Virgin, or some experience of the life without dwelling on
the actual experience of the vision. This certainly is the case with those
53 See the exchange between Hildegard and Tenxwind, Epistolarium, I, 52–52R, pp. 125–
30, and Mews, “Hildegard of Bingen, the Speculum Virginum and Religious Reform,” in
Umfeld, pp. 237–67.
54 See Jacqueline Amat, ed., Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité suivi des Actes, SC 417
(Paris, 1996), pp. 51–66, for discussion of its authorship and transmission.