A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

78 constant j. mews
the language of visionary discourse was very diffferent. She never wrote
about personal mystical experiences being inspired by meditation on the
crucifijied Christ. Her conception of the Virgin is that of a much more of a
cosmic fijigure through whom Christ becomes incarnate to humanity. She
viewed the incarnation as the cornerstone for a vision of creation as a
whole, which was sustained by the Holy Spirit. Rather than identify herself
with the experiences of the Virgin in the manner Rupert describes in
commenting on the Song of Songs, she defijined herself as “a frail human
being, ash of ash and fijilth of fijilth” (homo fragilis et cinis cineris, et putredo
putredinis), a deliberate comparison of herself with Job as interpreted
by Gregory the Great, the archetypal human being who has to learn the
ways of God.73
Hildegard employs visionary descriptions, not to describe the next
world, but to present her understanding of the way that the human soul
relates to God. There can be no doubting the originality of her conception
of both human nature and its eternal destiny. Her understanding of the
uiriditas or life force animating the natural world provided her with a particularly
vivid metaphor to explain the nature of the divinity that became
incarnate in Christ himself. In both the fijinal stanza of the Ordo uirtutum,
and in the fijifth vision of the Liber diuinorum operum, Hildegard alludes
to the suffferings of Christ as a consequence of a weakening of uiriditas in
creation.74 Unlike Rupert of Deutz, however, her primary focus was not so
much on the sufffering of Christ as on the mystery of the incarnation as the
path through which vitality could be restored to creation as a whole.
Hildegard’s visions are very diffferent from those of Otloh of St Emmeram
in scale and conception. Yet it can be helpful to consider how both Otloh
and Hildegard employed visions to defijine afresh “the ways of the Lord,”
not just for monks, but for clerics and laypeople alike. Visions provided a
means for communicating a message both to educated and uneducated
alike. A scholar could observe that her visions drew on a rich repertoire of
scriptural imagery, laden with allegorical signifijicance. At the same time,
those who lacked formal instruction in exegesis could relate the visual
images which she described to their own experience.
73 Gregory the Great, Moralia in Iob 3.31, ed. Marc Adriaen, CCCM 143 (Turnhout, 1979),
p. 152.
74 Diu. operum 3.5.8, p. 418; Ordo, p. 521.