A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

hildegard of bingen and the hirsau reform 77
The unifying theme behind Rupert’s account, as indeed behind his
whole eschatological vision, was a conviction that the Holy Spirit was
continuously pouring itself out in history. This visitation of the Spirit he
interpreted in very personal terms. He describes the experience as “a truly
calm fijire” (ignis ualde serenus) around which there was a great peace and
security, so that he knew he need have no fear.69 His description of this
experience of the Holy Spirit was that of “a wonderful living thing and
true life” that became richer and richer with each experience, and like
“liquid gold” provided his readers with a new way of thinking about mystical
experience. It parallels Hildegard’s description in Scivias of a fijiery
light that fijilled her whole brain, heart, and breast. Rupert’s comments
about Waldrada provide a slender but precious witness to intense female
piety in the early 12th century. By explaining to his readers that the Holy
Spirit could descend on both an unlettered woman and a learned exegete,
Rupert raised the possibility that a woman could be inspired by the Holy
Spirit as much as any learned monk.
More than any previous commentator, Rupert relates his understanding
of the text of the Song of Songs to personal experience. When commenting
on 5:4: “My beloved thrust his hand through the door, and my
womb trembled at his touch,” Rupert reports the experience of “one of
the young women” (quaedam adulescentularum) who felt a hand touching
her breast, a hand that was “sweeter than oil and more agile than the
wing of a bird,” but a hand that did not wish to be caught. When gazing
on the image of the Savior in a church, the image seemed to become alive;
its right hand stretched out and made the sign of the cross, causing this
“young woman” to tremble like the leaf of a tree.70 The “young woman”
in question was in fact himself, as he subsequently admitted in his commentary
on Matthew.71 Hildegard never quoted Rupert in such a slavish
way that his influence can easily be glimpsed in her writings.72 Nonetheless,
she would certainly have found stimulus in his writings for thinking
that visionary insight could provide a superior form of knowledge to that
provided by the teachers in the schools of northern France.
While Hildegard shared Rupert’s conviction that the Holy Spirit could
be experienced as a living, interior fijire, the way in which she employed
69 Ibid., CCCM 29:376.
70 Rupert of Deutz, In Cancticum Canticorum 5, ed. Rhaban Haacke, CCCM 26 (Turnhout,
1974), pp. 110–11.
71 Rupert of Deutz, Super Matthaeum, CCCM 29:394–95.
72 See Speaking New Mysteries, pp. 185, 267, 283, 295, on other exegetical parallels.