CAREY Postdoctoral Fellow 2005-06
Stephen D'Evelyn
University of Cambridge, Medieval Latin Literature
Hildegard of Bingen’s 'Symphonia armonie celestium
revelationum':
Text, Translations, and Commentary
My project is a commentary with emended text and translations of
Hildegard of Bingen's collection of lyrics, the 'Symphonia armonie
celestium revelationum'. It addresses the common misconception,
illustrated by the most popular edition of Hildegard's poetry, that
Hildegard draws upon nothing but Scripture and liturgy in writing
her lyrics. By tracing precedents for Hildegard's unusual turns
of phrase, I have found sources for many of her ideas in a range
of writings from antiquity as well as the Middle Ages, and by checking
the catalogues of monastic libraries to which she probably had access,
(since we have no record of her own library), I have been able to
establish that she would have actually been able to read these texts.
My thesis is that Hildegard, so famous as a visionary, was in possession
of much learned culture, and that her lyrics turn this learned culture
into forms of praise for God and the saints.
The commentary itself consists of the texts of the lyrics, which
I have emended in the light of my collation of the two principal
MSS, and of my detailed study of Hildegard's diction. These texts
are accompanied by translations. For each lyric, I first give parallels
for particular phrases from Hildegard's other lyrics. Next comes
a line-by-line discussion in which I indicate parallels in works
that may have influenced Hildegard's diction, and parallels from
sources that probably did not influence her, but in which the author
expresses an idea that through comparison illuminates Hildegard's
own meaning. I also give parallels in Hildegard's three principal
prose works, letters, two scientific works, and musical play. Finally,
for each lyric I give a summary of the train of thought. I include
essays discussing the lyrics' performance. We see the contexts for
Hildegard's lyrics.
With its findings, the commentary leads us to further questions
about cultural life in the monastery. I shall investigate whether
Hildegard's borrowings function as allusions that require the listener
to trace their origin, or as images which work together upon the
imagination as responses to the beauty of divinity, or both. This
raises a further question for the hermeneutics of Christian aesthetics:
how can we read Hildegard's lyrics from the point of view of her
community of high-born and well-educated women? Central to this
question is the nuns' communal effort not only to live out the ethic
of courtly monasticism in the context of the Hirsau Reform, with
its emphasis upon women's learning, but also to become sensitive
to the beauty of their intellectual heritage in order to glorify
the divine.
Dr. D'Evelyn will teach CLLA 10002 - First Year Latin - for the Classics department in Spring 2006.
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