Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/469

CHAP. XIX the whole of the twelfth century; for she was born in 1099 and died in 1179. Her parents were of the lesser nobility, holding lands in the diocese of Mainz. A certain holy woman, one Jutta, daughter of the Count of Spanheim, had secluded herself in a solitary cell at Disenberg—the mount of St. Disibodus—near a monastery of Benedictine monks. Drawn by her reputation, Hildegard's parents brought their daughter to Jutta, who received her to a life like her own. The ceremony, which took place in the presence of a number of persons, was that of the last rites of the dead, performed with funeral torches. Hildegard was buried to the world. She was eight years old. At the same time a niece of Jutta also became a recluse, and afterwards others joined them.

On the death of Jutta in 1136, Hildegard was compelled to take the office of Prioress. But when the fame of the dead Jutta began to draw many people to her shrine, and cause a concourse of pilgrims, Hildegard decided to seek greater quiet, and possibly more complete independence;

Sanctae Hildegardis opera Spicilegio Solesmensi parata (1882). Certain supplementary passages to the latter volume are published in Analecta Bollandiana, i. (Paris, 1882). These publications are completed by F. W. E. Roth's Lieder und die unbekannte Sprache der h. Hildegardis (Wiesbaden, 1880). The same author has a valuable article on Hildegard in Zeitschrift für kirchliche Wissenschaft, etc., 1888, pp. 453-471. See also an article by Battandier, Revue des questions historiques, 33 (1883), pp. 395-425. Other literature on Hildegard in Chevalier's Répertoire des sources historiques du moyen ǻge, under her name. Her two most interesting works, for our purposes at least, are the Scivias (meaning Scito vias Domini), completed in 1151 after ten years of labour, and the Liber vitae meritorum per simplicem hominem a vivente luce revelatorum (Pitra, o.c. pp. 1-244), begun in 1159, and finished some five years later. Extracts from these are given in the text. Other works show her extraordinary intellectual range. Of these the Liber divinorum operum simplicis hominis (Migne 197, col. 741-1038) is a vision of the mysteries of creation, followed by a voluminous commentary upon the world and all therein, including natural phenomena, human affairs, the nature of man, and the functions of his mind and body. It closes with a discussion of Antichrist and the Last Times. The work was begun about 1164, when Hildegard finished the Liber vitae meritorum, and was completed after seven years of labour. She also wrote a Commentary on the Gospels, and sundry lives of saints, and there is ascribed to her quite a prodigious work upon natural history and the virtues of plants, the whole entitled: Subtilitatum diversarum naturarum creaturarum libri IX. (Migne 197, col. 1118-1351); and probably she composed another work on medicine, i.e. the unpublished Liber de causis et curis (see Pitra, o.c., prooemium, p. xi.). Preger's contention (Geschichte der deutschen Mystik, i. pp. 13-27, 1874) that the works bearing Hildegard's name are forgeries, never obtained credence, and is not worth discussing since the publication of Pitra's volume.