(TMR 99.04.15)

Joseph L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman, eds. and transs.  <i>The
Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, Vol. II</i>.  New York: Oxford
University Press, 1998.  $45.00 ISBN: 0-195-12010-8.

   Reviewed by Barbara K. Newman
Northwestern University
bjnewman@nwu.edu

The book under review is the second of four projected volumes
which, when complete, will offer anglophone readers the full set
of nearly four hundred letters sent and received by the famed
visionary abbess.  In its sheer volume as well as its scope, this
correspondence ranks among the most important twelfth-century
collections that we have.  It deserves to be studied not only by
Hildegard specialists, but by every medievalist interested in the
cultural history of her age.  For the collection's ultimate value
may lie not so much in what it reveals about Hildegard herself as
in the cross-section of twelfth-century religious life exposed by
her fan mail.

Since the correspondence raises some thorny editorial issues, I
will explain as clearly as possible what the present volume does
and does not contain.  Lieven Van Acker, the critical editor of
Hildegard's correspondence, was able to complete the first two
volumes of a projected three before his death in 1994.  Because
so many of the letters are not only undated, but undatable, Van
Acker chose to follow the most important manuscript in arranging
the letters hierarchically rather than chronologically.  Thus his
first volume (<i>Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio Mediaeualis,
Vol. 91</i> [Turnhout: Brepols, 1991]) includes all of
Hildegard's correspondence with popes, archbishops, and bishops
("Class 1") as well as the first portion of her correspondence
with monasteries, arranged in alphabetical order from Albon
through Ebrach ("Class 2").  Van Acker's second volume (<i>Corpus
Christianorum: Continuatio Mediaeualis, Vol. 91A</i> [Turnhout: 
Brepols, 1993]) contains the remaining letters in Class 2, with
monastic correspondents from Ellwangen through Zwiefalten. 
Hildegard's exchanges with unidentified religious, her letters to
lay correspondents, and a few of her occasional writings are to
appear in a third volume, now in the hands of Monika Klaes.

When Joseph Baird and Radd Ehrman published their first English
volume in 1994, it included all ninety letters in Van Acker's
first volume.  For Volume II, the match is less tidy.  Baird and
Ehrman now offer Letters 91-217, with monastic correspondents
from Ellwangen through Trier.  This discrepancy between the Latin
and English editions occurs because, regrettably, Van Acker's
second volume offered only Hildegard's side of the exchange with
two of her most important correspondents, Guibert of Gembloux and
Elisabeth of Schoenau.  Baird and Ehrman, using separate editions
of Guibert and Elisabeth, have happily reunited Hildegard's
incoming with her outgoing mail, thus sparing the reader much
vexation.  But Guibert's letters, while fascinating, tend to be
prolix, so the space they occupy has displaced the final batch of
monastic epistles (218-250, Trier through Zwiefalten) to the
third volume of the English edition, which in turn awaits the
final volume of the Latin.

Hildegard's correspondents in Volume II include eighteen abbesses
and thirty-eight heads of male communities (abbots, provosts, and
deans).  Many of these colleagues express a degree of reverence
for the visionary that surpasses even the effusive conventions of
epistolary style then in vogue.  Hildegard is "the refulgent
glory of sacred religion," writes an abbot of Pfalzel (p. 144);
to her friend Sophia, abbess of Kitzingen, she is "the instrument
of the Holy Spirit foreordained for the chimes of so many
virtues, mystically embossed with so many miracles" (p. 95). 
Some of these correspondents had never met Hildegard, yet begged
her plaintively for an "admonition" or "consolation" straight
from the mouth of God.  A sizable number -- twelve abbots, four
abbesses -- sought permission to resign their burden of
leadership, but instead received exhortations to remain in office
and weed the Lord's garden or chastise his erring sheep. 
Hildegard advised abbots to discipline their monks with maternal
solicitude, and warned abbesses to moderate the rigor of their
fasting.  Her language is as steeped in biblical rhetoric as any
monk's, yet, in striking contrast to the letters she received,
the ones she wrote display only superficial traces of epistolary
form.  Omitting conventional salutations, she plunged directly
into her message or, when a higher style was needed, began by
identifying her voice as that of Wisdom, the Serene Light, "He
Who Is," or some other sobriquet for God.

Often the letters tantalize by their vagueness, since prudence
required that juicy particulars be entrusted to the bearer rather
than the parchment.  Reading between the lines, however, we can
surmise that a provost in Mainz, apparently homosexual, had
almost despaired of salvation because of his "abominable
iniquity" (p. 118), while an abbot in Cologne, tempted to
atheism, thought his doubts "so unusual and unbelievable" that no
mortal could credit them.  If Hildegard answered the provost, her
reply has not survived.  But she consoled the abbot with a
proto-Cartesian argument: "whoever says in his heart that God
does not exist is also saying that heaven and earth, and all
things living in God and with God, do not exist, and is,
moreover, denying his own existence.  How very foolish it is for
a person who sees himself and knows himself to say in his doubt,
'I do not exist'" (p. 101).

Amid the anxieties and longings of these religious, so hungry for
the direct access to God that they believed Hildegard could
offer, we detect an occasional whiff of polemic.  Her beloved
secretary Volmar, in his only surviving letter (ca. 1170),
excoriates the vanity of students who "undertake difficult
journeys into remote parts of the world to seek out the teachings
of various men . . . [and] sweat over the profundity, or, rather,
the enigma, of sententiae" (p. 168).  These scholastics
"extinguish the spark of God's Spirit by their contempt for it,"
Volmar inveighs -- but, to confound their arrogance, the Spirit
has poured divine wisdom abundantly into Hildegard's "fragile
vessel."  The abbess herself takes a similar line with an abbot
of Heilsbronn, complaining about "certain men" who wish to know
all things in their intellectual pride, yet "hate the success of
those who walk in the straight path" (p. 62).  In this case
Hildegard's language, reminiscent of the Cistercians' ferocious
attacks on Abelard, has been toned down by the translators. 
They let her refer to the schoolmen metaphorically as a
"diabolical crowd" and a "generation of malignant spirits,"
whereas her Latin text accuses them of acting on the instigation
of literal demons.  Such exchanges shed a revealing light on
Hildegard's reputation.  One reason she attracted such devotion
was that Benedictines and Cistercians alike saw her as their
shining bulwark against scholasticism, with its spiritual
emptiness and professional puffery.

The apogee of this fervor is represented by Guibert of Gembloux,
the Belgian monk who became Hildegard's confidant, secretary, and
publicist at the end of her life.  Guibert's enthusiasm for the
seer knew no bounds.  Before he ever set eyes on her, he was
already praising her as "unique among women," second only to
Mary, and when she finally graced him with the now-celebrated
letter describing her visions, he laid it on the altar and prayed
before presuming to read it.  Nor was this youthful ebullience: 
Guibert was about fifty at the time, while Hildegard was
seventy-seven.  If we can posit a twelfth-century brand of New
Age spirituality, Guibert's florid prose is its medium: he was
overcome with joy to encounter a real, live mystic.  The monk's
letters also have a historic significance, for it was his network
of epistolary connections that linked Hildegard with the
hagiographically-minded monks of Villers and, through them, the
beguines of the next generation.  A highlight of this volume is
letter 105, which includes thirty-five difficult scriptural
queries addressed by the Villers monks to Hildegard.  Despite
their relentless nagging, the monks never received the ailing
seer's replies, so it is fitting that we too must await a later
volume to peruse them.

Among other points of interest, Volume II contains Hildegard's
correspondence with some of her closest friends, including
Manegold, abbot of Hirsau; Philip, abbot of Park; Elisabeth of
Schoenau; and Ludwig, abbot of St. Eucharius in Trier.  A few
texts in this volume are not letters at all, but sermons or
treatises, including the apocalyptic "Kirchheim prophecy" (letter
149r); a set of homilies and liturgical texts directed to the
Rupertsberg nuns (letters 192-194); and an anti-Cathar screed
(letter 169r) written in July 1163, only weeks before several
heretics were burnt alive at Cologne.  The collection also
includes Elisabeth's even more strident anti-Cathar sermon
(letter 202/203), evidence of the two women's active
participation, along with Elisabeth's brother Ekbert, in a
well-orchestrated campaign against heresy.

Finally, a word on the translators' achievement.  Hildegard's odd
Latin has brought many a translator to grief, and her idiom in
these letters is as demanding as ever.  Baird and Ehrman strive
for, and generally attain, a clear English that irons out the
grammatical awkwardness of the Latin while retaining the mixed
metaphors so endemic to Hildegard's style.  Of course one might
argue with particular choices.  In an especially dense letter to
Dieter of Maulbronn, Hildegard -- speaking as "the Wise Man of
the bold light" (prudens uir audacis lucis) -- apostrophizes the
abbot in a long series of figures, including this one: "O fortis
ligatura, torque mammas uoluptatum pullulantium uitiorum." 
Baird and Ehrman render this as, "O strong bond, turn aside the
breasts of burgeoning desire for vice" (p. 130).  But the image
Hildegard had in mind seems to have been a medieval analogue of
the sports bra:  "Like a tight breastband, flatten the breasts of
pleasures that nurse infant vices."  Having masculinized her own
voice, in short, she proceeds to feminize the abbot.  Quibbles
aside, however, this translation is a fine piece of work, as
lucid as any Hildegard is likely to get.  In their endnotes,
Baird and Ehrman have thoughtfully supplied the Latin for more
than sixty passages of special difficulty, and they have provided
both a scriptural and a topical index.