2. The character of the principal figure of the first miniature (Plate [VI]) is almost identical with the curious universe-embracing double-headed figure of the second miniature (Plate [VII]).
3. The features and draughtsmanship of the central figure of the second miniature (Plate [VII]) are identical with those of the third (Plate [VIII]).
4. The beasts’ heads arranged round the second miniature (Plate [VII]) are exactly reproduced in the third miniature (Plate [VIII]).
Now although these three miniatures are in some respects unique, they contain elements enabling us to date them with an approach to accuracy. These elements are to be found especially in the central figure of the second and third miniatures (Plates [VII] and [VIII]).
About the middle of the thirteenth century, as Venturi has shown,[18] there was a well-marked change in Northern Italy in the traditional representation of the form on the Cross. This change was followed with almost slavish accuracy, and the new form is well represented by a painting in the Uffizi Gallery (Plate [X]). It is this figure of Christ which is reproduced by our miniaturist. The central figure of Plates [VII] and [VIII] resembles that of the Uffizi crucifix, for instance, in the general pose of the body, in the position of the legs and of the arms, in the treatment of the abdominal musculature, in the method of outlining the muscles of the legs and of the arms, and in a minute and very constant detail by which the outline of the left side is continued with the fold of the groin, thus giving an impression of the left thigh being advanced on the right. Furthermore, the somewhat Byzantine cast of countenance of the figure can be closely paralleled from Northern Italian work of the same period. We therefore regard these first three miniatures of the Lucca MS. as dating from about the middle of the thirteenth century.
The remaining two miniatures (Plates [IX] and [XI]) offer special difficulties. Plate [XI] (illustrating the fifth vision) presents us with no complete human figures, except the small and probably copied inset of the prophetess below the miniature. The faces bear some resemblance to those of the last five miniatures; the wings, on the other hand, to those of the first miniature (Plate [VI]). It is perhaps possible that this miniature was the work of an early thirteenth-century artist, and that the wings and some other details were added by a later hand. The abnormal orientation, east to the left and south above, suggests that we have here to do with some special influence.
The most anomalous of all is, however, the beautiful fourth miniature (Plate [IX]). This picture has a general feeling of the early Renaissance, though it is hard to find in it any definite humanistic element. The nude female figure in the upper left quadrant is especially striking. No parallel to it is to be found in the thirteenth-century Italian miniatures that have so far been reproduced, and it appears to us difficult to date the miniature anterior to the fourteenth century at the very earliest. It is, in any event, by a different hand to the others. The rashes on the patients in the two upper and the right lower quadrants are perhaps an attempt to render the fatal ‘God’s tokens’ of those waves of pestilence that devastated the Italian peninsula in the fourteenth century.
Whatever the date of these miniatures, however, they reproduce the meaning of the text of the Liber divinorum operum with a convincing certainty and sureness of touch. This work is the most difficult of all Hildegard’s mystical writings. Without the clues provided by the miniatures, many passages in it are wholly incomprehensible. It appears to us therefore by no means improbable that the traditional interpretation of Hildegard’s works, thus preserved to our time by these miniatures and by them alone, may have had its origin from the mouth of the prophetess herself, perhaps through another set of miniatures that has disappeared or has not yet come to light.[19]
IV. The Spurious Scientific Works of Hildegard
The scientific views of Hildegard are embedded in a theological setting, and are mainly encountered in the Scivias and the Liber divinorum operum simplicis hominis. To a less extent they appear occasionally in her Epistolae and in the Liber vitae meritorum.