A paper written for Medieval Church History (forgot to post it back then!):

The 12^th century abbesses Hildegard of Bingen and Heloise of the Paraclete could not have been less alike. Hildegard, a virginal[1] visionary[2], as a “tithe”[3] child spent most of her life enclosed and unexposed to the world. Her rise to position in her cloistered community came gradually, growing into the “age of perfect strength”[4] by “forty-two years and seven months.”[5] Heloise, on the other hand, prior to her forced and hasty entrance into monastic life,[6] had lived as a well-educated woman of the world who “enjoyed a great reputation for her knowledge of letters.”[7] As the hungry lover (though reluctant wife[8]) of master dialectician Peter Abelard, her sexual passion, a close ally in her younger years would later become her chief adversary.[9] It was not wisdom cultivated through the years but rather additional adversity[10] that brought the young nun quickly to a position of authority. Yet, by comparing self-disclosing documents written by these female authorities we uncover a common bond. In the midst of great pain and suffering they capitulated, surrendering to the will of “another.”  And in each case, this surrender, instead of emphasizing their status as “poor little females,”[11] led to greater productivity and personal empowerment.

First, I will investigate the preface to Scivias:  “Declaration: these are true visions flowing from God” in order to show that Hildegard of Bingen, “distressed in mind and sense and endur[ing] great pain of the body,” was compelled by others to “set [her] hand to writing” the “admirable visions” she had been receiving since childhood.[12] According to Flanagan, after Hildegard made that painstaking decision to write “the things [she would] see and hear,”[13] her “written works not only surpassed those of most of her male contemporaries in the range of their subject matter (from natural history, medicine, and cosmology, to music, poetry, and theology), but also outshone them in visionary beauty and intellectual power.”[14] Secondly, I will look at a letter written by[15] Heloise to Peter Abelard, referred to by the translator as “Letter 6…Letter of Direction”[16] in which we discover both the “unbounded grief” [17] that Heloise continued to experience from the loss of her intimate relationship with Abelard, as well as the new “direction” her mind took toward “more worthy…subjects”[18] after her capitulation.

Hildegard: Declaration

The “Declaration” is the preface to a large work that took “ten years”[19] to complete. In this preamble Hildegard puts forth the reasons why she was “compelled” to begin to write out the “secret and admirable visions” that she had been receiving “from the age of five” which she had formally kept “in quiet silence.”[20] She tells of four separate influences: two of a compelling nature and two by those who bore “witness”[21] to her need to write down what the “Living Light”[22] was revealing to her.

The first compelling influence was, indeed, this “Living Light, Who illuminates the darkness”[23] and, addressing Hildegard, says: “O fragile human, ashes of ashes, and filth of filth! Say and write what you see and hear…and write them not by yourself or any other human being, but by the will of Him Who knows, sees and disposes all things in the secrets of His mysteries.”[24] This “voice from Heaven”[25] goes on to tell Hildegard that she must write a certain way because she is “timid in speaking, and simple in expounding, and untaught in writing.”[26] Dronke suggests that this is the “prophet” [Hildegard] seeing “herself as timid in her own right” and therefore basing the claim to speak as “Sapientia’s mouthpiece.”[27] Hildegard assures that she writes “not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received…in the heavenly places.”[28]

The second compelling influence was an unknown physical malady: “Laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses…I set my hand to writing.”[29] Even if, as Sacks has suggested, the illness suffered by Hildegard was caused by migraines, I concur with Boyce-Tillman[30] that this explanation for her sufferings does not negate the validity of the prophetic visions, nor undermine her compulsion to write them down.

The two “witnesses” that spurred Hildegard on were “a certain noble maiden of good conduct” and “that man whom I had secretly sought and found.”[31] The maiden was Richardis of Stade, Hildegard’s favorite nun and personal assistant. [32] Such was Hildegard’s love for the young nun that, when Richardis was offered the prestigious position of abbess at Bassum sometime after the writing of Scivias, Hildegard vehemently opposed the promotion including “pleas made to the highest authority in Christendom, the Pope himself.”[33] Failing to persuade the pontiff, Hildegard wrote directly to Richardis of her deep despair at losing her: “Why have you forsaken me like an orphan? I so loved the nobility of your character, your wisdom, your chastity, your spirit, and indeed every aspect of your life that many people have said to me: ‘What are you doing?’”[34]

“That man” is a reference to her secretary, Volmar of Disibodenberg, a monk that she “found” and “loved…knowing that he was a faithful man, working like herself.”[35] Volmar remained her secretary and friend until his death in 1173.[36] To Volmar, Hildegard was his “sweetest mother” even though they were close in age.[37]

Motivated by these four influences, Hildegard, having “reached the age of full maturity”[38] relinquished her “fear and timidity” to become the mouthpiece of one who “chose” her and by whom she was “miraculously stricken…and placed among great wonders, beyond the measure of the ancient people…[having] closed up the cracks in her heart that her mind may not exalt itself in pride and vainglory, but may feel fear and grief rather than joy and wantonness.”[39] Many years later Guibert of Gembloux would report that Hildegard had “gained such fame that multitudes flocked to her convent.”[40] After meeting her himself he argued that “no woman since the Virgin Mary” was gifted as she was, having “transcended female subjection by a lofty height…equal to the eminence, not just of any men, but of the very highest.”[41]

It is important to try and understand why Hildegard “refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words.”[42] She herself says that it was not “stubbornness but in the exercise of humility.”[43] Thompson[44] argues that it was Hildegard’s own understanding of the priesthood, including the interpretation and expounding of scripture, as the sole right of the male which caused her to delay. In the “Declaration” Hildegard reveals that she “immediately…knew the meaning of the exposition of the Scriptures, namely the Psalter, the Gospel and the other catholic volumes of both the Old and the New Testaments…I had sensed in myself the power and mystery of secret and admirable visions from my childhood…”[45] This knowledge from “above” may have caused cognitive dissonance which the female prophet needed time to reconcile. Flanagan suggests that in addition to the issue of being a female, Hildegard may have been intimidated by her lack of the formal education[46] deemed necessary at the time to the writer’s craft. Also, due to the mid-life timing of Hildegard’s capitulation to write, Flanagan suggests that Hildegard’s mistress Jutta (who had died not long before Hildegard began writing) may have, herself, been an “inhibiting factor to Hildegard’s self-expression.”[47]

Heloise: Letter 6

While Hildegard attended to several influential voices in coming to terms with her calling to write, Heloise could hear but one: that of Peter Abelard. In a prior letter to Abelard Heloise laments:

At every stage of my life up to now, as God knows, I have feared to offend you rather than God, and tried to please you more than him. It was your command, not love of God, which made me take the veil. Look at the unhappy life I lead, pitiable beyond any other, if in this world I must endure so much in vain, with no hope of future reward.[48]

Addressing this letter to her “only love,”[49] the response from Abelard addressed simply “To the bride of Christ, from His servant”[50] must have been painful for Heloise. The first, curt line of the letter even more so: “The whole of your last letter is given up to a recital of your misery over the wrongs you suffer…”[51] After reading his detailed, logical explanations as to why she should not “presume to blame God for the manner of our entry into religion” but instead to “glorify him as you justly should,” Heloise’s despair must have deepened. Yet, Abelard – perhaps unwittingly- had also thrown her a lifeline:

The more dangerous such bitterness is to you in wearing out body and soul alike, the more pitiful it is and distressing to me. If you are anxious to please me in everything, as you claim…you must rid yourself of it. If it persists you can neither please me nor attain bliss with me.[52]

These interactions now bring us to Letter 6: Heloise’s reply. It is in this missive that we observe the capitulation and consequent change of direction in Heloise. Radice reflects on this “turning point of the correspondence” observing that “we are never to know if [Heloise] was able to achieve a change of heart and reorientation of herself towards God.”[53] Heloise begins her letter with her motivation to surrender to Abelard’s will: “I would not want to give you cause for finding me disobedient in anything, so I have set the bridle of your injunction on the words which issue from my unbounded grief…”[54] She continues that, while Abelard has not offered to “entirely remove” her grief, hope for a “remedy”[55] was hidden between the lines:

As one nail drives out another hammered in, a new thought expels an old, when the mind is intent on other things and forced to dismiss or interrupt its recollection of the past. But the more fully any thought occupies the mind and distracts it from other things, the more worthy should be the subject of such a thought and the more important it is where we direct our minds.

And so all we handmaids in Christ, who are your daughters in Christ, come as suppliants to demand of your paternal interest…[56]

And here is the brilliance of her reluctant, but resultant acquiescence! Rather than continuing to demand that Abelard be “singularly”[57] hers in the same way that she is devoted to him, or taking other drastic and self-absorbed measures (such as threatening suicide and her consequent eternal damnation) Heloise demands instead that he pay the paternal interest due both herself and all of the nuns at the Paraclete.

Heloise goes on to ask of Abelard two things: that he instruct them as to “how the order of nuns began” and that he “prescribe…a Rule which shall be suitable for women.”[58] This letter mark’s the beginning of many requests that she makes of Abelard, each one replete with intelligent and convincing arguments as to the practical merit of their being done by him. Mews suggests that Heloise “forced Abelard to extend his interest to topics to which he had not previously given much attention.”[59] In addition to the history of the nuns and the Rule for the Paraclete, Heloise convinced Abelard to write a new hymnal and even a new liturgy for the Paraclete that “was not only interesting for the range of influences it absorbed but also for its articulation of a distinct theological identity.”[60] Indeed, Heloise essentially “forced”[61] her brilliant husband/now father to “explore a new type of writing and to harness his poetic gifts [which he had formally used to seduce her through his “troubadourian” love songs[62]] to new ends.”[63]

Flanagan argues that Heloise, having the educational advantage over Hildegard should have been more prolific.[64] She also further suggests that “such a low opinion of her own worth [as a female] may partly explain why Heloise did not do more with her talents.”[65] Yet Hildegard, too, perceived herself as a “poor little female.”[66] But (and here is an important difference) Hildegard’s “style [of writing] clearly proclaims her prophetic self-awareness.”[67] Heloise, on the other hand, remained to her last days, the devoted wife of Peter Abelard.[68] None-the less, despite their differences (and their sisterhood of suffering), each of these women made the difficult decision to surrender their own predilections to advance the greater good of their communities.

Bingen, Hildegard of. Scivias. Translated by Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1990.

Boyce-Tillman, June. “Hildegard of Bingen:A Woman of Our Time.” Feminist Theology 8, no. 25 (1999).

Burge, James. Heloise and Abelard. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2003.

Dronke, Peter. Women Writers of the Middle Ages : A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua (¬203) to Marguerite Porete (¬1310). New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Flanagan, S. Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-1179: A Visionary Life: Routledge, 1998.

Gilson, Etienne. Heloise and Abelard. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963.

Hart, C, B Newman, and J Bishop. Scivias: Paulist Pr, 1990.

The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. Translated by Betty Radice and M.T. Clanchy. London: Penguin Group, 1974.

Maddocks, F. Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age: Image, 2003.

Mews, CJ. Abelard and Heloise: Oxford University Press, USA, 2005.

Newman, Barbara. “Hildegard of Bingen: Visions and Validations.” Church History 54, no. 2 (1985).

———. Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine. Berkley: University of California Press, 1998.

Thompson, Augustine. “Hildegard of Bingen on Gender and the Priesthood.” Church History (1999): 349-64.

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[1] Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine (Berkley: University of California Press, 1998). 126

[2] C Hart, B Newman, and J Bishop, Scivias (Paulist Pr, 1990).

[3] F Maddocks, Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age (Image, 2003). 17

[4] S Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-1179: A Visionary Life (Routledge, 1998). 41

[5] Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans. Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1990). 59

[6] After her uncle had her husband castrated…for one version of this story see James Burge, Heloise and Abelard (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2003). 132-135

[7] CJ Mews, Abelard and Heloise (Oxford University Press, USA, 2005). 59

[8] Etienne Gilson, Heloise and Abelard (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963). 34

[9] The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. Betty Radice and M.T. Clanchy (London: Penguin Group, 1974). 54 Heloise, in her first letter to Abelard says, “While I enjoyed with you the pleasures of the flesh, many were uncertain whether I was prompted by love or lust…” and; 68, in her second “The pleasures of lovers which we shared have been too sweet…wherever I turn they are always there before my eyes, bringing with them awakened longings and fantasies which will not even let me sleep.”

[10] Burge, Heloise and Abelard. Here I am referring to the expulsion of the nuns from Argenteuil by Suger of St.-Denis and their consequent placement at Abelard’s Oratory of the Paraclete, at which Heloise took up the responsibility of Abbess.

[11] Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine. 2

[12] Bingen, Scivias. 60

[13] Ibid.

[14] Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-1179: A Visionary Life. xi

[15] Based on the argument presented (140-143) by Peter Dronke in Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1984), I choose to reject the assertion of Abelardian authorship for this letter as claimed by Benton and others.

[16] The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. Table of Contents.

[17] Ibid. 93

[18] Ibid.

[19] Hart, Newman, and Bishop, Scivias. 61

[20] Ibid. 59-60

[21] Ibid. 60

[22] Ibid. 60

[23] Ibid. 60

[24] Ibid. 59

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages : A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua (¬203) to Marguerite Porete (¬1310) (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 146

[28] Hart, Newman, and Bishop, Scivias. 61

[29] Bingen, Scivias. 60

[30] June Boyce-Tillman, “Hildegard of Bingen:A Woman of Our Time,” Feminist Theology 8, no. 25 (1999).

[31] Hart, Newman, and Bishop, Scivias. 60

[32] Maddocks, Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age. 114

[33] Ibid. 108

[34] Ibid. 115

[35] Hart, Newman, and Bishop, Scivias. 60

[36] Maddocks, Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age. 106 There was one brief interruption caused by Abbot Cuno who “initially refused to release him to join her” when she moved from Disibodenberg to Rupertsberg.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Hart, Newman, and Bishop, Scivias. 60

[39] Ibid.

[40] Barbara Newman, “Hildegard of Bingen: Visions and Validations,” Church History 54, no. 2 (1985).

[41] Ibid.

[42] Hart, Newman, and Bishop, Scivias. 60

[43] Ibid.

[44] Augustine Thompson, “Hildegard of Bingen on Gender and the Priesthood,” Church History (1999).

[45] Bingen, Scivias. 59

[46] Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-1179: A Visionary Life. In particular, Hildegard did not receive education in the “seven liberal arts, the basis of the medieval cuuriculum.” 45

[47] Ibid. 42

[48] The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. 69

[49] Ibid. 63

[50] Ibid. 72

[51] Ibid.

[52] Ibid. 79

[53] The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. xxxii

[54] Ibid. 93

[55] Ibid.

[56] The Letters of Abelard and Heloise.. 95

[57] Ibid.

[58] Ibid. 94

[59] Mews, Abelard and Heloise. 159

[60] Ibid. 165

[61] Ibid.

[62] The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. 52 Heloise, in her first letter to Abelard writes, “In you…there were two things especially, with which you could immediately win the heart of any woman- the gift of composing and the gift of singing.”

[63] Ibid.

[64] Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-1179: A Visionary Life. 48

[65] Ibid.

[66] Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine. 27

[67] Ibid.

[68] The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. 224 Referencing her last extant letter requesting Abelard’s letter of absolution from Peter the Venerable