Ashmole 345, late 14th century, fol. 64, “Bernardinus.”
Bodleian (Bernard 2177, #6) Auct. F. 3. 13, fol. 104v, “Bernardini silvestris.”
CHAPTER XL
SAINT HILDEGARD OF BINGEN: 1098-1179
Was Hildegard influenced by Bernard Silvester?—(Bibliographical note)—Her personality and reputation—Dates of her works—Question of their genuineness—Question of her knowledge of Latin—Subject-matter of her works—Relations between science and religion in them—Her peculiar views concerning winds and rivers—Her suggestions concerning drinking-water—The devil as the negative principle—Natural substances and evil spirits—Stars and fallen angels; sin and nature—Nature in Adam’s time; the antediluvian period—Spiritual lessons from natural phenomena—Hildegard’s attitude toward magic—Magic Art’s defense—True Worship’s reply—Magic properties of natural substances—Instances of counter-magic—Ceremony with a jacinth and wheaten loaf—Her superstitious procedure—Use of herbs—Marvelous virtues of gems—Remarkable properties of fish—Use of the parts of birds—Cures from quadrupeds—The unicorn, weasel, and mouse—What animals to eat and wear—Insects and reptiles—Animal compounds—Magic and astrology closely connected—Astrology and divination condemned—Signs in the stars—Superiors and inferiors; effect of stars and winds on elements and humors—Influence of the moon on human health and generation—Relation of the four humors to human character and fate—Hildegard’s varying position—Nativities for the days of the moon—Man the microcosm—Divination in dreams.
Was Hildegard influenced by Bernard Silvester?
The discussion of macrocosm and microcosm, nous and hyle, by Bernard Silvester in the De mundi universitate is believed by Dr. Charles Singer, in a recent essay on “The Scientific Views and Visions of Saint Hildegard,” to have influenced her later writings, such as the Liber vitae meritorum and the Liber divinorum operum. He writes “The work of Bernard ... corresponds so closely both in form, in spirit, and sometimes even in phraseology to the Liber divinorum operum that it appears to us certain that Hildegard must have had access to it.”[338] Without subscribing unreservedly to this view, we pass on from the Platonist and geomancer of Tours to the Christian “sibyl of the Rhine.”[339]
Her personality and reputation.
From repeated statements in the prefaces to Hildegard’s works, in which she tells exactly when she wrote them and how old she was at the time,—for not only was she not reticent on this point but her different statements of her age at different times are all consistent with one another—it is evident that she was born in 1098. Her birthplace was near Sponheim. From the age of five, she tells us in the Scivias, she had been subject to visions which did not come to her in her sleep but in her wakeful hours, yet were not seen or heard with the eyes and ears of sense. During her lifetime she was also subject to frequent illness, and very likely there was some connection between her state of health and her susceptibility to visions. She spent her life from her eighth year in religious houses along the Nahe river, and in 1147 became head of a nunnery at its mouth opposite Bingen, the place with which her name was henceforth connected. She became famed for her cures of diseases as well as her visions and ascetic life, and it is Kaiser’s opinion that her medical skill contributed more to her popular reputation for saintliness than all her writings. At any rate she became very well known, and her prayers and predictions were much sought after. Thomas Becket, who seems to have been rather too inclined to pry into the future, as we shall see later, wrote asking for “the visions and oracles of that sainted and most celebrated Hildegard,” and inquiring whether any revelation had been vouchsafed her as to the duration of the existing papal schism. “For in the days of Pope Eugenius she predicted that not until his last days would he have peace and grace in the city.”[340] It is very doubtful whether St. Bernard visited her monastery and called the attention of Pope Eugenius III to her visions, but her letters[341] show her in correspondence with St. Bernard and several popes and emperors, with numerous archbishops and bishops, abbots and other potentates, to whom she did not hesitate to administer reproofs and warnings. For this purpose and to aid in the repression of heresy she also made tours from Bingen to various parts of Germany. There is some disagreement whether she died in 1179 or 1180.[342] Proceedings were instituted by the pope in 1233 to investigate her claims to sainthood, but she seems never to have been formally canonized. Gebenon, a Cistercian prior in Eberbach, made a compendium from her Scivias, Liber divinorum operum, and Letters, “because few can own or read her works.”[343]
Dates of Hildegard’s works.