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Please reference as: Tamboukou, Maria. 2026. "Hildegard of Bingen", https://sites.google.com/view/soundscapesandechoes/home/hildegard-von-bingen/visionary-works
The Visionary Works of Hildegard of Bingen: Cosmos, Virtue, and the Living Light
The visionary writings of Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179) constitute one of the most ambitious and intellectually expansive bodies of mystical literature produced in the Middle Ages. Composed over roughly three decades, from the early 1140s to the 1170s, her three major works—Scivias, Liber Vitae Meritorum, and Liber Divinorum Operum—present a vast symbolic universe in which cosmology, theology, ethics, and salvation history are interwoven through what she called the lux vivens, the living light; read together, they form a progressive architecture of vision that moves from the drama of salvation through the moral structure of human life to a sweeping synthesis of the cosmos as divine creation. These writings have also generated a rich and interdisciplinary scholarly literature spanning theology, medieval studies, gender history, musicology, and intellectual history. Foundational studies by Barbara Newman (1987, 1998) established the symbolic coherence and theological sophistication of Hildegard’s visionary cosmology within monastic and Sapiential traditions, while subsequent work by Sabina Flanagan (1998) and Bernard McGinn (1998) integrated her visions into broader histories of medieval mysticism and prophetic authority. More recent scholarship has further examined Hildegard’s visionary epistemology, embodiment, and cosmology—especially concepts such as viriditas, microcosm–macrocosm symbolism, and the interplay of image and exegesis—demonstrating that her trilogy constitutes not only a major corpus of medieval mystical writing but also a systematic theological and cosmological synthesis articulated through visionary form. [1] This overarching design becomes clearer when each work is considered in turn, from the salvation history of Scivias through the moral anthropology of Liber Vitae Meritorum to the cosmic theology of Liber Divinorum Operum.
Hildegard’s first major work, Scivias (“Know the Ways”), written between 1141 and 1151, is also the most narratively ordered. Its twenty-six visions unfold the story of creation, fall, redemption, and ultimate restoration. Here the cosmos appears as a radiant and structured whole, enclosing humanity within divine fire and order; one of the most famous images is the layered “cosmic egg,” a universe held within living light. The middle section of the work turns toward the Church, imagined as a luminous feminine figure whose body encompasses sacramental life and salvation history. The final visions move toward eschatology, culminating in the struggle of the Virtues against evil and in the harmony of the redeemed creation. Scivias thus establishes Hildegard’s characteristic themes: the universe as a living organism, humanity as a microcosm within it, and salvation as a process of restoration into divine luminosity. The work famously concludes with the Ordo Virtutum, a sung drama in which personified Virtues give voice to the moral and cosmic order she has seen.
In her second visionary book, Liber Vitae Meritorum (“Book of the Merits of Life”), composed in the following decade, Hildegard turns from the broad arc of salvation history to the interior and ethical drama of human existence. The work presents an immense moral landscape structured as a series of dialogues between Virtues and Vices, each speaking in turn. Here the human soul appears as a field of tension between forces that either align it with divine harmony or distort its place within creation. Hildegard does not treat ethics as merely behavioral or juridical; virtues and vices are cosmological dispositions that shape the soul’s relation to the living order of the world. The moral life is therefore inseparable from the structure of the cosmos itself, and human choice participates in the same order that governs elements, stars, and history. The work also includes vivid visionary depictions of judgment and afterlife states, reinforcing the sense that ethical orientation reverberates beyond earthly life.
Hildegard’s final and most conceptually ambitious visionary work, Liber Divinorum Operum (“Book of Divine Works”), completed in the 1160s and 1170s, expands this vision into a comprehensive theological cosmology. Here she develops the idea of the human being as microcosm within the macrocosm, often figured as a vast cosmic human form inscribed within the structure of the universe. Creation appears as a dynamic, radiant order sustained by divine vitality, and history unfolds as the progressive manifestation of God’s work. In this culminating synthesis, cosmology, anthropology, and theology converge: humanity mediates between elements and Creator, and the entire universe is permeated by the living light that Hildegard experiences in vision. Compared with Scivias, which moves through narrative salvation history, and Liber Vitae Meritorum, which dramatizes moral struggle, Liber Divinorum Operum offers a speculative and integrative account of divine creation as an ordered, living whole.
Across all three works Hildegard describes her visionary perception in strikingly consistent terms. She insists that she sees “not with the outer eyes,” but within what she calls the shadow of the living light (umbra viventis lucis). Her visions are neither dreams nor trance states but a mode of illuminated cognition in which image and understanding arise together. Each vision therefore unfolds in two movements: first the appearance of a luminous symbolic scene, and then an interpretive voice that explains its meaning. The result is a distinctive hybrid form that combines visionary imagery with theological exegesis. Hildegard does not simply report experiences; she constructs an intelligible symbolic universe in which creation, humanity, and God are bound together.
Taken together, the visionary trilogy encompasses an extraordinary intellectual range. It moves from creation and redemption to moral anthropology and cosmic theology, integrating ecclesiology, eschatology, natural philosophy, and liturgical imagination. Few medieval authors attempted so comprehensive a synthesis, and fewer still did so outside scholastic institutions. Hildegard’s authority derives not from dialectical argument but from illumination: knowledge granted through vision yet articulated with systematic coherence. Her works thus demonstrate how a medieval woman could intervene in theological and cosmological discourse through a culturally recognized form of revelation.
The visionary writings of Hildegard of Bingen ultimately present not isolated mystical episodes but a sustained architecture of meaning. From the salvation history of Scivias through the ethical drama of Liber Vitae Meritorum to the cosmic synthesis of Liber Divinorum Operum, her visions trace a universe alive with divine radiance. To read them is to enter a medieval imagination in which creation burns with significance, virtues speak, and humanity stands within a living cosmos suffused by light.
Notes
[1] See amongst others, Butcher 2007, Fournier-Rosset 2010, Kienzle et al. 2014, Bain 2021, Fassler 2022.
References
Bain, Jennifer ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
Butcher, Carmen Acevendo. Hildegard of Bingen: A Spiritual Reader. Paraclete Press, 2007.
Fassler, Margot E. Cosmos, Liturgy, and the Arts in the Twelfth Century: Hildegard’s Illuminated Scivias. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022.
Flanagan, Sabina. Hildegard of Bingen: A Visionary Life. London: Routledge, 1989.
Fournier-Rosset, Jany. From Saint Hildegard's Kitchen: Foods of: Health, Foods of Joy. Liguori. 2010
McGinn, Bernard The flowering of mysticism : men and women in the new mysticism (1200-1350) . New York : Crossroad, 1998.
Kienzle, Beverly Mayne , Stoudt, Debra, L. and Ferzoco, George. Eds. A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen. Leyden: Brill, 2014.
Newman, Barbara. Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and Her World, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Newman, Barbara, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theologyof the Feminine. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987; reprint 1987.
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