Fig. 2. HILDEGARD’S FIRST SCHEME OF THE UNIVERSE
Slightly simplified from the Wiesbaden Codex B, folio 14 r.
(C) This MS. is at the University Library at Heidelberg. It also contains only the Scivias, and it is the only known illuminated MS. of that work except the Wiesbaden Codex B. The Heidelberg MS. was prepared with great care in the early thirteenth century, only a little later than its fellow, but its figures afford little aid in the interpretation of the text. Thus, for instance, the Heidelberg diagram of the universe (Plate [IV]) is of a fairly conventional type which quite fails to illustrate the difficult description. The obscurities of the text are, however, at once explained by a figure in the Wiesbaden Codex B (Fig. 2): we thus obtain further indirect evidence of the personal influence of Hildegard in the preparation of that MS. The representation of Hildegard in the Heidelberg MS. (Plate [III]) shows no resemblance to those in the Wiesbaden Codex B (Plate [I]) or in the Lucca MS. (Plates [VI] to [IX]), which will now be described.
(D) is an illustrated codex of the Liber divinorum operum simplicis hominis at the Municipal Library at Lucca. It contains ten beautiful miniatures, some of which are here reproduced (Plates [VI] to [IX] and [XI]), as they are of special value for the interpretation of Hildegard’s theories on the relation of macrocosm and microcosm.
This Lucca MS. was described and its text printed in 1761 by Giovanni Domenico Mansi,[16] a careful scholar, who was himself sometime Archbishop of Lucca. Mansi concluded that it was written at the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century. On palaeographical grounds a slightly later date would nowadays probably be preferred (Plate [V b]).
The work consists of ten visions, each illustrated by a figure. The date, character, and meaning of these miniatures raise special problems to which only very superficial reference can here be made. Unfortunately but little work has been done on early Italian schools of miniaturists, and it is not a subject on which any exact knowledge can yet be said to exist.[17]
Of these ten miniatures we may dismiss the last five in a few words. The sixth to the tenth visions are of purely theological interest, and the miniatures illustrating them are by a different hand to the rest. They are all relatively crude products, which appear to us to resemble other Italian work of the period at which the MS. was written. We shall concentrate our attention on the first five miniatures.
The first three miniatures of the Lucca MS. (Plates [VI] to [VIII]) may be attributed to the same hand on the following grounds:
1. All have a very similar inset figure of the prophetess below the main picture.