[566] Pitra, o.c. p. 92 sqq.
[567] Ibid. p. 131 sqq. Of course, one at once thinks of the punishments in Dante’s Inferno, which in no instance are identical with those of Hildegard, and yet offer common elements. Dante is not known to have read the work of Hildegard.
[568] Pitra, o.c. pp. 230-240. I am not clear as to Hildegard’s ideas of Purgatory, for which she seems to have no separate region. In the case of sinners who have begun, but not completed, their penances on earth, the punishments described work purgationem, and the souls are loosed (ibid. p. 42). In Part III. of the work we are considering, the paragraphs describing the punishments are entitled De superbiae, invidiae, inobedientiae, infidelitatis, etc., poenis purgatoriis (ibid. p. 130). But each paragraph is followed by one entitled De poenitentia superbiae, etc., and the poenitentia referred to is worked out with penance in this life. Consequently it is not quite clear that the word purgatoriis attached to poenis signifies temporary punishment to be followed by release.
In a vision of the Last Times (ibid. p. 225) Hildegard sees “black burning darkness,” in which was gehenna, containing every kind of horrible punishment. She did not then see gehenna itself, because of the darkness surrounding it; but heard the frightful cries. Cf. Aeneid, vi. 548 sqq.
[569] This is the view expounded so grandly by Hugo of St. Victor in his De sacramentis, post, Chapter XXVIII.
[570] Migne 197, col. 433. All this is interesting in view of the many figures of the Church and Synagogue carved on the cathedrals, most of them later than Hildegard’s time. The “Synagogue” of sculpture has her eyes bound, the sculpturesque expression of eyelessness. The rest of Hildegard’s symbolism was not followed in sculpture.
[571] Migne 197, col. 437 sqq. Cf. St. Bernard, Sermo xix. in Cantica.
[572] Migne 197, col. 449.
[573] Notice the supra-terrestrial term, which can hardly be translated so as to fit an actual wall.
[574] Migne 197, col. 583. Compare this vision with the symbolic interpretation of the cathedral edifice, post, Chapter XXIX.