A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

74 constant j. mews
“the ways of the Lord” in Scivias may be much more elaborate, but she
follows the same expository technique as Otloh employs: she describes an
allegorical image and then offfers an interpretation of that image. Whereas
for Otloh it is the unnamed guide who explicates the vision to the pauper,
for Hildegard it is “the Living Light” who reveals the signifijicance of the
images that she sees.60
In many ways, Otloh was a traditional monastic moralist, primarily
concerned with castigating hypocritical monks and clerics, and distrustful
of those who relied excessively on secular learning. His only example
of a woman’s vision relates to a nun to whom the Empress Theophanu
revealed that she, the Empress, was sufffering eternal torment for having
introduced luxurious fashions into France and Germany, and thus causing
other women to sin by lusting after similar clothes.61 This moralism led
him to emphasize that the simple and uneducated can sometimes have
more insight than those in authority, as in his account of the pauper’s
vision of Bishop Gebhard.
Otloh’s awareness of how nature, art, and music could lead us back to
God illustrates the intellectual concerns current among reform-minded
monks in Germany in the 11th century, picked up by William of Hirsau.
This type of thinking was shared by many reform-minded monks in the
late 11th century, and Hildegard would build upon this in her own way.
Whether she ever came across Otloh’s writings is not known. Nonetheless,
she shared his conviction that knowledge of the natural world was itself a
way of coming closer to God, and that visions provided a powerful way by
which she could communicate her insights to a wider audience.
Hildegard and Rupert of Deutz
Hildegard’s inspiration did not come only from houses connected to the
Hirsau reform. At Disibodenberg, she would certainly have been exposed
to the prolifijic output of Rupert of Deutz (c.1075–1129), whose writings
circulated widely throughout abbeys in the Rhineland and beyond, even
during his own lifetime.62 Originally a monk at Saint-Laurent in Liège,
Rupert left that city when his abbot was expelled by a hostile bishop.
60 See Speaking New Mysteries, p. 28, on Otloh’s discussion of several parables with
moral lessons.
61 Otloh, Visio 17, ed. Schmidt, p. 91.
62 On Rupert, see John Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz (Berkeley, 1970).