Folio 17 r col. b Folio 32 v col. b Folio 205 r col. b
Plate II. THE THREE SCRIPTS OF THE WIESBADEN CODEX B
Hildegard’s journeys, undertaken with the object of stimulating spiritual revival, were of the nature of religious progresses, but, like those of her contemporary, Bernard of Clairvaux, they were in fact largely directed against the heretical and most cruelly persecuted Cathari, an Albigensian sect widely spread in the Rhine country of the twelfth century, whom Hildegard regarded as ‘worse than the Jews’.[4] In justice to her memory it is to be recalled that she herself was ever against the shedding of blood, and had her less ferocious views prevailed, some more substantial relic than the groans and tears of this people had reached our time, while the annals of the Church had been spared the defilement of an inexpiable stain.
Plate III. TITLE PAGE OF THE HEIDELBERG CODEX
OF THE SCIVIAS
Hildegard’s correspondence with St. Bernard, then preaching his crusade, with four popes, Eugenius III, Anastasius IV, Adrian IV, and Alexander III, and with the emperors Conrad and Frederic Barbarossa, brings her into the current of general European history, while she comes into some slight contact with the story of our own country by her hortatory letters to Henry II and to his consort Eleanor, the divorced wife of Louis VII.[5]
To complete a sketch of her literary activities, mention should perhaps be made of a secret script and language, the lingua ignota, attributed to her. It is a transparent and to modern eyes a foolishly empty device that hardly merits the dignity of the term ‘mystical’. It has, however, exercised the ingenuity of several writers, and has been honoured by analysis at the hands of Wilhelm Grimm.[6]
Ample material exists for a full biography of Hildegard, and a number of accounts of her have appeared in the vulgar tongue. Nearly all are marred by a lack of critical judgement that makes their perusal a weary task, and indeed it would need considerable skill to interest a detached reader in the minutiae of monastic disputes that undoubtedly absorbed a considerable part of her activities. Perhaps the best life of her is the earliest; it is certainly neither the least critical nor the most credulous, and is by her contemporaries, the monks Godefrid and Theodoric.[7]