International Society of Hildegard von Bingen Studies

Antiphon at Lauds (likely for Psalm 92[93]) for St. Ursula and CompanionsBack to Table of Contents
(D 167v, R 471vb-472ra) by Hildegard of Bingen

Studium divinitatis
in laudibus excelsis osculum pacis
Ursule virgini
cum turba sua in omnibus populis dedit.

The zeal of divinity
gave with heaven’s praise the kiss of peace
to Ursula the virgin
and her brood among all peoples.

Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.

The following recording by Anonymous 4 sets the antiphon together with Psalm 92) (video 36:28-41:05):

Transcription and Music Notes
by Beverly Lomer

E mode
Range: D below the final to C above
Setting: syllabic

In this short antiphon, Hildegard employs E as the primary grammatical marker. However, the outlining of phrases with the final is not as tightly organized as it is in other works. For example, the first phrase ends on G. We considered using studium divinitatis as the first phrase, with in laudibus beginning the second on B, the usual secondary tonal grammatical pitch in this mode. That solution, however, would result in other, more unusual notes as phrase punctuators. Thus, what we have is a mixture of E, G and A as punctuation devices.

Consequently, the phrasing in the transcription splits the word sense in some cases. Alternatively, the first two lines of the transcription can be understood as one single phrase, with E marking the beginning and the end on the word pacis. I split the phrase after the G on laudibus so that the next line could begin on A, an acceptable tonal marker for Hildegard in E mode.

Musically, the most appropriate first line could end with divinitatis, in which the next line could begin with B, also an accepted tonal marker, and continue on to conclude on pacis. This would make a long phrase to sing, and to make the transcription readable would have to be split into two lines at any rate. Similarly, the last two lines can be conceived as a single phrase, again a long one. In singing, depending on how the performers interpret the phrasing, pauses for breath, if needed, could be either very quick or more determinate in terms of punctuating the long phrases.

Further Resources for Studium divinitatis

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 236 and 309-11.
Berschin, Walter. “Eine Offiziendichtung in der Symphonia Hildegards von Bingen: Ursula und die Elftausend Jungfrauen (carm. 44).” In Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of her Thought and Art. Ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke. London: The Warburg Institute, 1998, pp. 157-62.
Flanagan, Sabina. “Die Heiligen Hildegard, Elisabeth, Ursula und die elftausend Jungfrauen.” In Tiefe des Gotteswissens - Schönheit der Sprachgestalt bei Hildegard von Bingen. Ed. Margot Schmidt. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 1995, pp. 209-22.
Flynn, William. “Reading Hildegard of Bingen’s Antiphons for the 11,000 Virgin-Martyrs of Cologne: Rhetorical ductus and Liturgical Rubrics.” Nottingham Medieval Studies 56 (2012), pp. 174-89.
Flynn, William. “Hildegard (1098-1179) and the Virgin Martyrs of Cologne.” In The Cult of St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins. Ed. Jane Cartwright. University of Wales Press, 2016, pp. 93-118.
Walter, Peter. “Die Heiligen in der Dichtung der hl. Hildegard von Bingen.” In Hildegard von Bingen, 1179-1979. Festschrift zum 800. Todestag der Heiligen. Ed. Anton Ph. Brück. Mainz: Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 1979, pp. 211-37, at 223-29.
For a discography of this piece, see the comprehensive list by Pierre-F. Roberge: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography

Antiphon at Lauds (likely for Psalm 99[100]) for St. Ursula and CompanionsBack to Table of Contents
(D 167v, R 472ra) by Hildegard of Bingen

Unde quocumque venientes
perrexerunt, velut cum gaudio
celestis paradisi suscepte sunt,
quia in religione morum
honorifice apparuerunt.

So no matter where they went,
as with the joy
of heaven’s paradise they were received,
for their religious life
was their honor.

Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.

Transcription and Music Notes
by Beverly Lomer

A mode in Dendermonde
D and A modes in Riesenkodex
Range in Dendermonde: One pitch below the final to an octave above
Range in Riesenkodex: Depends on how one interprets the shift from opening D to concluding A.
Setting: syllabic and neumatic

Because the sources present two very different versions of this piece, we have created two transcriptions. In Dendermonde, the final is A, and there are some Bb’s, which could indicate a transposition - or not, as Hildegard’s use of A and C as modal finals is not straightforward. In Riesenkodex, the antiphon begins with D but ascends in the second line to encompass A as the final. Phrase breaks in the transcriptions are made after A and after E. Dendermonde includes two versions of the differentia.

Further Resources for Unde quocumque

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 236 and 309-11.
Berschin, Walter. “Eine Offiziendichtung in der Symphonia Hildegards von Bingen: Ursula und die Elftausend Jungfrauen (carm. 44).” In Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of her Thought and Art. Ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke. London: The Warburg Institute, 1998, pp. 157-62.
Flanagan, Sabina. “Die Heiligen Hildegard, Elisabeth, Ursula und die elftausend Jungfrauen.” In Tiefe des Gotteswissens - Schönheit der Sprachgestalt bei Hildegard von Bingen. Ed. Margot Schmidt. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 1995, pp. 209-22.
Flynn, William. “Reading Hildegard of Bingen’s Antiphons for the 11,000 Virgin-Martyrs of Cologne: Rhetorical ductus and Liturgical Rubrics.” Nottingham Medieval Studies 56 (2012), pp. 174-89.
Flynn, William. “Hildegard (1098-1179) and the Virgin Martyrs of Cologne.” In The Cult of St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins. Ed. Jane Cartwright. University of Wales Press, 2016, pp. 93-118.
Walter, Peter. “Die Heiligen in der Dichtung der hl. Hildegard von Bingen.” In Hildegard von Bingen, 1179-1979. Festschrift zum 800. Todestag der Heiligen. Ed. Anton Ph. Brück. Mainz: Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 1979, pp. 211-37, at 223-29.
For a discography of this piece, see the comprehensive list by Pierre-F. Roberge: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography

Antiphon at Lauds (likely for Psalm 62[63]) for St. Ursula and CompanionsBack to Table of Contents
(D 168r, R 472ra) by Hildegard of Bingen

De patria etiam earum
et de aliis regionibus
viri religiosi
et sapientes ipsis adiuncti sunt,
qui eas in virginea custodia servabant
et qui eis in omnibus ministrabant.

And from their country,
and from other places, too,
men wise
and of religion joined up with them,
to keep them safe with virgin guard
and serve them in all things.

Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.

Transcription and Music Notes
by Beverly Lomer

D mode
Range: G below final to E a ninth above
Setting: Syllabic and neumatic

This is a relatively straightforward short antiphon in D mode. All of the phrases are neatly outlined by the final. Hildegard begins the first four lines with a linked D to A motif. Readers will note that I have placed the et that falls between lines one and two of the transcription on line one in order to preserve the rhetorical repetition.

While we generally do not make recommendations for ficta in the transcriptions in their current/literal renditions of the source, it is worth noting the Bb on line four. Dendermonde does not sign the flat, but it appears in R. The presence of the flat creates a tritone, which is forbidden. The E might be an error, but it appears in both manuscripts. Singers would have two options - leave the E and sing B natural, or change E to D and sing Bb. While there is an F in the downward progression from the B, the melody continues in an upward direction to complete the singing of the word sapientes.

The differentia in R does not contain pitches.

Further Resources for Unde quocumque

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 236 and 309-11.
Berschin, Walter. “Eine Offiziendichtung in der Symphonia Hildegards von Bingen: Ursula und die Elftausend Jungfrauen (carm. 44).” In Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of her Thought and Art. Ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke. London: The Warburg Institute, 1998, pp. 157-62.
Flanagan, Sabina. “Die Heiligen Hildegard, Elisabeth, Ursula und die elftausend Jungfrauen.” In Tiefe des Gotteswissens - Schönheit der Sprachgestalt bei Hildegard von Bingen. Ed. Margot Schmidt. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 1995, pp. 209-22.
Flynn, William. “Reading Hildegard of Bingen’s Antiphons for the 11,000 Virgin-Martyrs of Cologne: Rhetorical ductus and Liturgical Rubrics.” Nottingham Medieval Studies 56 (2012), pp. 174-89.
Flynn, William. “Hildegard (1098-1179) and the Virgin Martyrs of Cologne.” In The Cult of St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins. Ed. Jane Cartwright. University of Wales Press, 2016, pp. 93-118.
Walter, Peter. “Die Heiligen in der Dichtung der hl. Hildegard von Bingen.” In Hildegard von Bingen, 1179-1979. Festschrift zum 800. Todestag der Heiligen. Ed. Anton Ph. Brück. Mainz: Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 1979, pp. 211-37, at 223-29.
For a discography of this piece, see the comprehensive list by Pierre-F. Roberge: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography

Sara Salvadori. Hildegard von Bingen: A Journey into the Images. Trans. Sarah Elizabeth Cree and Susan Ann White. Milan: Skira, 2019. 224pp, 175 color illustrations. Available from the publisher and Amazon.

Two decades after Lieselotte Saurma-Jeltsch’s landmark study of Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias illustrations—the first volume to reproduce full-size, full-color plates from the modern replica of the lost manuscript^[1]—English-language readers finally have access to a comparable edifice in Sara Salvadori’s new study. Whereas Saurma-Jeltsch approached the images as a professional art historian (and thus her volume is indispensable for setting the historical context for the manuscript), Salvadori has spent years trying to understand the images from the inside-out, as it were. Her meticulous analysis and exploration of their “grammar and rhetoric” has combined with the lavish editorial direction of arthouse publisher Skira to produce this remarkable and beautiful volume.

The book comprises three main sections. The first section is introductory, and includes two prefaces by renowned Italian scholars, Giorgio Mazzanti and Michela Pereira (the latter also provided the Italian translations of Hildegard’s texts), as well as a brief Introduction by Salvadori that sketches out the structure of the “journey.” Chapter I gives a “Portrait” of Hildegard’s life and times, with a peculiar eye towards her geographical landscape (more on that later). The second chapter then gives an overview of the content and structure of Scivias, Hildegard’s first major visionary treatise, along with a “general map” of the illustrations (pp. 24-25). Here, Salvadori articulates the main themes that will guide her rhetorical analysis of the images, including the essential choice between good and evil, as well as the work’s overarching Trinitarian framework and movement. In particular, she notes the structural features that turn the work into a “sapiential journey” that leads the reader through the story of salvation, at both cosmic and personal levels. Salvadori’s principal thesis is that the illustrations themselves both narrate the journey of the soul back to God and articulate the universal contact points between the triune God and the pilgrimage of his people.


Schematic of Scivias 1.3: The Firmament (Salvadori, Hildegard von Bingen, p. 46)

This book’s most valuable feature is its second section (Chapter III), in which Salvadori lays out the “grammar” of the illustrations. It is essentially a catalogue of each of the manuscript’s 35 images, reproduced full-size, with explanatory text and thumbnails on the facing page annotated to explain every significant detail (see example at right). This is the first time that such a detailed catalogue has been made available in English, and it will serve particularly well to overcome the many erroneous interpretations that have arisen from the images’ inclusion in a variety of New Age materials, such as Matthew Fox’s popular but misleading work, Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen.^[2] Salvadori’s volume will (and must) utterly eclipse Fox’s as the standard go-to work in English.

In the final section of the book (Chapter IV), Salvadori presents the fruits of her years-long rumination upon the images, through an analysis of their “rhetoric.” Here, she moves from what they are saying to how and why they are saying it, in order to trace “the golden sapiential thread that passes through the figures/symbols.” Individual visual elements, including figures, shapes, frames, and colors, become links that traverse the narrative order of the illustrations.

Reconstruction of the Edifice of Salvation
(Salvadori, Hildegard von Bingen, p. 182)

This shifts the reader from a horizontal into a vertical perspective, making it “possible to look at the entire landscape, savoring its most intimate history, bearer of the revelation of the ‘ways,’ of the path of Wisdom that recounts the unfolding of the relationship between man and God” (p. 111). The manifold manifestations of the Trinity headline this exploration, followed by examinations of the connections between Earth and Heaven; the visual representations of creation and the cosmos; the contrast between light and dark; the manifestations of Mary, the Church, and their prefiguration in Synagogue; the path of salvation and human journey along it back to the heavenly Jerusalem; the “army of virtues” that accompanies this journey; and the heavenly choirs of praise that cap it off. Particularly compelling here is Salvadori’s three-dimensional reconstruction of the Edifice of Salvation in Part Three of Scivias (pp. 174-213). Her models allow Hildegard’s great city literally to leap off the page and give us an idea of how a visual thinker like her might have mentally manipulated the space, as well as imagined the personified Virtues acting within it.

Scivias 2.2: Trinity.
(Salvadori, Hildegard von Bingen, p. 61)

Salvadori is also acutely aware of the manuscript’s use of color as its own rhetorical language, which is an area that has often been neglected by art historical analyses of the images. For example, she analyzes background and border colors to persuasively articulate an overarching movement from the green of the earth, through the blue of the sky, and into the silver and gold of heavenly glory (pp. 132-137). Unfortunately, there is one crucial color scheme in the manuscript that she seems to have misread: the colors spun from the central vision of the Trinity (Scivias 2.2—see pp. 60-61 and 115). While accurately reading the sapphire blue as the Son, she reverses the colors that Hildegard uses to signify Father and Spirit: the Father is represented in gold, not silver; and the Spirit is represented in silver, not gold.^[3] There are moments when the overriding pictorial logic almost forces Salvadori into the correct order, as for example when she identifies the grey or silver “pole” descending into Creation in Scivias 2.1 as the Spirit (p. 129). But Salvadori’s fertile mind would have been able to produce much richer fruit had she carried through with that observation and emphasized the vital spaces that Hildegard opens up for the movement of the Holy Spirit through the extensive use of silver in the manuscript.

Even if some of Salvadori’s speculations seem far-fetched (such as mapping precise groundplans of the city of Jerusalem onto Hildegard’s illustration of the Edifice of Salvation on p. 178), the mode in which she labors to think about the images and their rhetorical strategies is closely akin to Hildegard’s own “symbolist” approach. The hallmark of the Visionary Doctor’s way of thinking is her constant awareness of the connections between the concrete and individual, on the one hand; and the universal and divine, on the other. Salvadori’s intense meditation upon the images has attuned her to just those same connections. Similarly, her account of Hildegard’s life and times at the beginning of the book (pp. 11-21) may seem to stray some considerable distance from a standard history, because Salvadori looks not only to situate Hildegard in her physical landscape (dominated by the rivers that allowed for communication and travel), but also to connect that landscape into the cosmic and spiritual perspectives of salvation history. Again, her mapping of the Scivias illustration of the embodiment of the soul onto the physical geography of the Rhineland and southern Europe may be far-fetched (p. 19), but it is precisely the kind of imaginative mapping that Hildegard herself would have engaged in.

One of the most significant drawbacks of the volume are infelicities in its English translation (Salvadori wrote originally in Italian). Michela Pereira provided all of the Italian translations from Hildegard’s Latin text of Scivias, and the English translator has rendered those directly, often with an overriding preference for cognates (e.g. “orient” and “occident” instead of east and west). The editors would have been much better served referencing the standard English translation of Scivias by Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (Paulist Press, 1990), and any reader of Salvadori’s book in English will want to have that volume at hand. One phrase where the preference for cognates is particularly detrimental is in the term, “candid cloud.” As Salvadori brilliantly elucidates (pp. 142-43), Hildegard uses the image of the cloud to connect and transform the figures of Eve, Mary, and Wisdom across the three parts of Scivias. Hildegard’s Latin phrase is candida nubes—but candida means “shining bright white,” and this crucial detail is lost with the cognate “candid.” (The English term derives its primary meaning from the toga candida, the bright-white toga worn by ancient Roman politicians to signify their supposed honesty and integrity, i.e. that they have nothing to hide.)

Salvadori plans a second volume for release next year, titled Scivias. A Journey beyond the Images, in which she intends to give a unified cosmological reconstruction of the illustrations’ visual universe. Hopefully, some of the translation missteps can be avoided in this future volume. If so, I eagerly await its application of the remainder of the liberal arts (dialectic and the quadrivium) to Salvadori’s ambitious interpretative project. Though they have worked entirely independently, there seems to be significant overlap between Salvadori’s work and the digital reconstructions pursued by Margot Fassler in the United States (see here). Both are giving Hildegard’s illustrations a new life for our time, grounded in Hildegard’s world but speaking to ours.

About the Author: Nathaniel M. Campbell is an adjunct instructor in the humanities at Union College (Kentucky, USA). His translation of Hildegard's The Book of Divine Works appeared from the Catholic University of America Press in 2018. He also co-edits this Society's online edition of Hildegard's Symphonia.

Footnotes

^[1] Lieselotte Saurma-Jeltsch, Die Miniaturen im „Liber Scivias“ der Hildegard von Bingen: die Wucht der Vision und die Ordnung der Bilder (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1998). ↩
^[2] Fox’s work forces many bizarre and baseless interpretations onto the images, in large part because of the way he appropriates medieval texts and images to suit his own, twentieth-century viewpoint—see the nuanced analysis of Barbara Newman, “Romancing the Past: A Critical Look at Matthew Fox and the Medieval ‘Creation Mystics’,” Touchstone 5 (1992), pp. 5-10: accessible online here. ↩
^[3] See Nathaniel M. Campbell, “Imago expandit splendorem suum: Hildegard of Bingen’s Visio-Theological Designs in the Rupertsberg Scivias Manuscript,” Eikón / Imago 4 (2013, Vol. 2, No. 2), 1-68, at pp. 37-40 and 46-61; accessible online here. ↩

Antiphon at Lauds (likely for the Benedicite) for St. Ursula and CompanionsBack to Table of Contents
(D 168r, R 472ra) by Hildegard of Bingen

Deus enim
in prima muliere presignavit
ut mulier a viri custodia
nutriretur.

For God has marked
in the primal woman
that woman should receive her care
from the guardianship of man.

Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.

Transcription and Music Notes
by Beverly Lomer

E mode
Setting: Primarily syllabic
Range: C below the final to E an octave above the final

In this short antiphon, the final, E, and B serve as the punctuating pitches for phrase demarcation. One can consider the first two lines of the transcription to be a single phrase, though the second line begins with the final. The following lines are also a single thought, and again Line 3 ends on B, which is not a final stop.

A Note on Liturgical Usage

As the fourth in the series, this antiphon would likely have been paired with the long canticle, Benedicite omnia opera, taken from the Vulgate text of Daniel 3:57-88, 56. This song, which appears originally only in the Greek text of the Septuagint (and thus is often classed in modern bibles as part of the “Apocrypha” or “Deutero-Canon”), was sung by the three Hebrew youths (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) when they were cast into the fiery furnace by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.

Further Resources for Deus enim in prima muliere presignavit

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 236 and 309-11.
Berschin, Walter. “Eine Offiziendichtung in der Symphonia Hildegards von Bingen: Ursula und die Elftausend Jungfrauen (carm. 44).” In Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of her Thought and Art. Ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke. London: The Warburg Institute, 1998, pp. 157-62.
Flanagan, Sabina. “Die Heiligen Hildegard, Elisabeth, Ursula und die elftausend Jungfrauen.” In Tiefe des Gotteswissens - Schönheit der Sprachgestalt bei Hildegard von Bingen. Ed. Margot Schmidt. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 1995, pp. 209-22.
Flynn, William. “Reading Hildegard of Bingen’s Antiphons for the 11,000 Virgin-Martyrs of Cologne: Rhetorical ductus and Liturgical Rubrics.” Nottingham Medieval Studies 56 (2012), pp. 174-89.
Flynn, William. “Hildegard (1098-1179) and the Virgin Martyrs of Cologne.” In The Cult of St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins. Ed. Jane Cartwright. University of Wales Press, 2016, pp. 93-118.
Walter, Peter. “Die Heiligen in der Dichtung der hl. Hildegard von Bingen.” In Hildegard von Bingen, 1179-1979. Festschrift zum 800. Todestag der Heiligen. Ed. Anton Ph. Brück. Mainz: Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 1979, pp. 211-37, at 223-29.
For a discography of this piece, see the comprehensive list by Pierre-F. Roberge: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography

Antiphon at Lauds (likely for Psalm 148) for St. Ursula and CompanionsBack to Table of Contents
(D 168r, R 472ra) by Hildegard of Bingen

Aer enim volat
et cum omnibus creaturis officia sua exercet,
et firmamentum eum sustinet ac
aer in viribus istius pascitur.

For the air is fleet
to function with all creatures,
while the firmament sustains it,
the air fed by its energy.

Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.

Transcription and Music Notes
by Beverly Lomer

E mode
Setting: primarily syllabic
Range: D below the final to E an octave above

The phrasing is fairly straightforward in this piece, with the final and fifth serving as the primary punctuating tones. Readers will note that Lines 1 and 4 of the transcription open with the same musical gesture on the word aer. While normal syntax would require that the conjunction ac begin a phrase, it is not unusual for Hildegard to use the musical grammar against the textual syntax and for rhetorical effect, in this case to highlight the repetition of aer. Lines 2 and 3 also repeat their own opening musical motive, though without breaking textual syntax.

A Note on Liturgical Usage

Normally, the fifth psalm antiphon in the Lauds office would accompany a combined singing of Psalms 148-150. However, as explained in our Introduction to this sequence, we follow William Flynn’s suggestion that Hildegard employed an expanded scheme in which each of those three final psalms receives its own antiphon. In that case, this antiphon would be used with Psalm 148—an appropriate pairing, given the psalm’s survey of all creation, bade to praise the Lord.

Further Resources for Aer enim volat

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 236 and 309-11.
Berschin, Walter. “Eine Offiziendichtung in der Symphonia Hildegards von Bingen: Ursula und die Elftausend Jungfrauen (carm. 44).” In Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of her Thought and Art. Ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke. London: The Warburg Institute, 1998, pp. 157-62.
Flanagan, Sabina. “Die Heiligen Hildegard, Elisabeth, Ursula und die elftausend Jungfrauen.” In Tiefe des Gotteswissens - Schönheit der Sprachgestalt bei Hildegard von Bingen. Ed. Margot Schmidt. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 1995, pp. 209-22.
Flynn, William. “Reading Hildegard of Bingen’s Antiphons for the 11,000 Virgin-Martyrs of Cologne: Rhetorical ductus and Liturgical Rubrics.” Nottingham Medieval Studies 56 (2012), pp. 174-89.
Flynn, William. “Hildegard (1098-1179) and the Virgin Martyrs of Cologne.” In The Cult of St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins. Ed. Jane Cartwright. University of Wales Press, 2016, pp. 93-118.
Walter, Peter. “Die Heiligen in der Dichtung der hl. Hildegard von Bingen.” In Hildegard von Bingen, 1179-1979. Festschrift zum 800. Todestag der Heiligen. Ed. Anton Ph. Brück. Mainz: Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 1979, pp. 211-37, at 223-29.
For a discography of this piece, see the comprehensive list by Pierre-F. Roberge: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography

Antiphon at Lauds (likely for Psalm 149) for St. Ursula and CompanionsBack to Table of Contents
(D 168r, R 472rb) by Hildegard of Bingen

Deus enim rorem in illas misit,
de quo multiplex fama crevit,
ita quod omnes populi
ex hac honorabili fama
velut cibum gustabant.

For God rained dew upon them
to grow their widespread fame,
that all the peoples should sup
of its honor
as of food.

Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.

Transcription and Music Notes
by Beverly Lomer

E mode
Range: C below the final - G an octave and a third above
Setting: Syllabic

This short antiphon is musically fairly straightforward. Phrases begin either with the final E or with B, the secondary tone in this mode. The opening salutation, Deus enim rorem in illas misit, is outlined by the final. The next phrase begins with B and ends with E. The third line, ita quod omnes populi, is the only exception to the use of the primary punctuating pitches, as it opens with D and ends with B.

A Note on Liturgical Usage

In line with the expanded psalmody we have proposed for this Office (see Introduction), we suggest that this antiphon would have been paired with Psalm 149, the second of the final trio of psalms at festal Lauds. As William Flynn has noted, the “religious life” (in religione morum) for which St. Ursula and her companions were honorably famous (commemorated in the second antiphon, Unde quocumque) may be a reference to their performance of the Divine Office. If so, then the office of praise “in the church of the saints” (in ecclesia sanctorum) that is central to the first part of Psalm 149 matches nicely with the spreading dewdrops of their fame in this antiphon.

Further Resources for Deus enim rorem in illas misit

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 236 and 309-11.
Berschin, Walter. “Eine Offiziendichtung in der Symphonia Hildegards von Bingen: Ursula und die Elftausend Jungfrauen (carm. 44).” In Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of her Thought and Art. Ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke. London: The Warburg Institute, 1998, pp. 157-62.
Flanagan, Sabina. “Die Heiligen Hildegard, Elisabeth, Ursula und die elftausend Jungfrauen.” In Tiefe des Gotteswissens - Schönheit der Sprachgestalt bei Hildegard von Bingen. Ed. Margot Schmidt. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 1995, pp. 209-22.
Flynn, William. “Reading Hildegard of Bingen’s Antiphons for the 11,000 Virgin-Martyrs of Cologne: Rhetorical ductus and Liturgical Rubrics.” Nottingham Medieval Studies 56 (2012), pp. 174-89.
Flynn, William. “Hildegard (1098-1179) and the Virgin Martyrs of Cologne.” In The Cult of St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins. Ed. Jane Cartwright. University of Wales Press, 2016, pp. 93-118.
Walter, Peter. “Die Heiligen in der Dichtung der hl. Hildegard von Bingen.” In Hildegard von Bingen, 1179-1979. Festschrift zum 800. Todestag der Heiligen. Ed. Anton Ph. Brück. Mainz: Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 1979, pp. 211-37, at 223-29.
For a discography of this piece, see the comprehensive list by Pierre-F. Roberge: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography

Votive Antiphon for the Dedication of a Church (D 170r, R 472rb-va)Back to Table of Contents
by Hildegard of Bingen

O virgo Ecclesia,
plangendum est,
quod sevissimus lupus filios tuos
de latere tuo abstraxit.
O ve callido serpenti!
Sed o quam preciosus est sanguis Salvatoris,
qui in vexillo regis
Ecclesiam ipsi desponsavit, unde filios
illius requirit.

O Virgin Church,
lament and mourn!
A savage wolf has snatched
your children from your side.
O woe to serpent’s trickery!
But O, how precious is the Savior’s blood
that with the royal banner sealed
his bridegroom’s promise to the Church,
whose children he is seeking.

Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.

Commentary: Themes and Theology
by Nathaniel M. Campbell

The rubric for this antiphon in the Risenkodex (fol. 472rb) indicates that it was written for the dedication of a church, and it forms a natural pair with the antiphon that follows it, Nunc gaudeant (see that antiphon's commentary for a discussion of their musical links). Together, they showcase the dichotomy that defines Hildegard’s grand visions of the Virgin Mother Church: she is at once a powerful feminine force, birthing God’s children as the spouse of God’s Son; and again, she is a woman battered, attacked, and abused. The Church’s power is rooted in her divine dispensation and its consummation in eternity, while her pain must be endured in history while ministering to a fallen world.

Those two realms—eternal glory and temporal pain—meet on the Cross, and so with the explicit echo of Venantius Fortunatus’ hymn, Vexilla regis, this antiphon finds the Virgin Mother Church standing together with the Virgin Mother Mary beneath its beam, each a mater dolorosa grieving the schisms that have rent the body of Christ.^[1] But in this antiphon, that lament is countered by the promise that Christ made on the Cross, his marriage vow to the Church (Ecclesia):

Scivias II.6: The Crucifixion.
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 86r

And after these things I saw the Son of God hanging on the cross, and the aforementioned image of a woman coming forth like a bright radiance from the ancient counsel. By divine power she was led to Him, and raised herself upward so that she was sprinkled by the blood from His side; and thus, by the will of the Heavenly Father, she was joined with Him in happy betrothal and nobly dowered with His body and blood.

And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to Him: “May she, O Son, be your Bride for the restoration of My people; may she be a mother to them, regenerating souls through the salvation of the Spirit and water.”
—Scivias II.6, Vision^[2]

Upon the Cross, therefore, Hildegard links the Church’s two most important sacraments, the vehicles by which she administers Christ’s power to the children they bear together: in the illustration of this vision from the Rupertsberg manuscript, the blood pours from his side into Ecclesia’s chalice—the Eucharist—but also onto her head, baptizing her in his blood as he will then regenerate their children “through the salvation of the Spirit and water.”

Scivias II.3: The Church and Baptism.
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 51r (detail)

In the first appearance of this figure of Ecclesia in Scivias (II.3), Hildegard sees her:

…the image of a woman as large as a great city, with a wonderful crown on her head and arms from which a splendor hung like sleeves, shining from Heaven to earth. (…) And that image spreads out its splendor like a garment, saying, “I must conceive and give birth!”

As her children then enter into her womb, she “draws them upward to her head, and they go out by her mouth.” Stripped of the black garments of original sin, each is now “clothed in a pure white garment.” Yet, despite the glory that surrounds these reborn children, Ecclesia knows that dark days lie ahead of them on their pilgrimage in the world:

And she, benignly gazing on them, said in a sad voice, “These children of mine will return again to dust. I conceive and bear many who oppress me, their mother, by heretical, schismatic, and useless battles, by robberies and murderers, by adultery and fornication, and by many such errors. Many of these rise again in true penitence to eternal life, but many fall in false obduracy to eternal death.”
—Scivias II.3, Vision

This is the dark journey that lies ahead for Ecclesia, whose true consolation awaits the end of time:

All things that are on earth hasten to their end, and the world droops toward its end, oppressed by the weakening of its forces and its many tribulations and calamities. But the Bride of My Son, very troubled for her children both by the forerunners of the son of perdition and by the destroyer himself, will never be crushed, no matter how much they attack her. But at the end of time she will rise up stronger than ever, and become more beautiful and more glorious; and so she will move sweetly and delightfully to the embraces of her Beloved.
—Scivias III.11.1

Hildegard’s writings are full of recriminations against the abuses that the Church would suffer throughout history—it was a signature of her prophetic voice, denouncing corruption and promoting reform in visions, preaching tours, and fiery letters.^[3] The hallmark of her way of thinking was to always connect particular crises in the Church with the universal movements of salvation history. As each of her children is joined through her to their head, Jesus Christ, so each of the wolves that attacks her is joined to their head, the serpentine Devil.

Barbara Newman has made the persuasive argument that this antiphon’s universalized image of Church in crisis marks Hildegard’s symbolic response to a specific crisis of the Church in the 1150’s, the revolt of Arnold of Brescia.^[4] Arnold had long been a troublemaker in the twelfth-century church, in ways not dissimilar to Hildegard on occasion. He was deeply disturbed by the corruption that ecclesiastical wealth seemed to breed in those of the Church’s ministers who were entangled in political affairs, and began to preach poverty against the luxury of the bishops and possessions of the monasteries. But whereas Hildegard only prophesied the radical disendowment of church property as the punishment awaiting such corruption,^[5] Arnold tried to actively effect it through his support of popular insurrections in Italy in the 1130’s, which earned him repeated condemnations, exiles, and penances.

As part of the penance enjoined on him by Pope Eugenius III in his reconciliation to the church in 1145, Arnold made a pilgrimage to Rome, where he fell in with those powers who agitated for the establishment of the Roman Republic and secular rule over the city—tensions that broke into a full-fledged rebellion against the papacy that forced Eugenius to flee the city from 1146 to 1149 while it was ruled as a republican commune, with Arnold as one of its greatest supporters. Excommunicated in 1148, Arnold’s rhetoric did not abate: he condemned the entire hierarchy from Pope on down for not acceding to his demands that they relinquish temporal power. Eventually, Eugenius’ successor, Pope Adrian IV, went so far as to the place the entire city of Rome under interdict during Holy Week of 1155, a measure that finally compelled the populace to hand over Arnold and receive back the Pope. It may thus have been the liturgical context of Arnold’s final defeat—a ban on the public performance of any liturgy during the highest week of the liturgical calendar—that prompted Hildegard to situate this antiphon within the drama of the Crucifixion.

It is clear why Hildegard would hold Arnold for censure as “a savage wolf”—he broke with the Church and went too far, rending her garments with his schismatic zeal. Yet, she also shared in some ways his quite valid concerns over the corruption of the Church—simoniacs were among her most frequent targets for censure. At the same time, she made no apologies for certain uses of finery and wealth, as she makes clear in her letter responding to Tengswich of Andernach’s criticism of her abbey’s classism and use of fine jewelry and silk veils.^[6] The key is to understand the place of that wealth within the Church’s service of God—the opus Dei, the especially musical liturgical worship that Pope Adrian’s interdict would have silenced during that Holy Week of 1155 in the city of Rome. We know from Hildegard’s own response to such an interdict near the end of her life how grave such a situation was for her, for it would let loose the Devil from the symphonic fetters that kept him at bay.^[7] As the companion antiphon Nunc gaudeant indicates, it is “in the heavens’ symphony” that the Church’s motherly office is restored after suffering the abuse of schism.

Transcription and Music Notes
by Beverly Lomer

E mode
Range: C below the final to E an octave above
Setting: syllabic and pneumatic

In this antiphon, Hildegard primarily outlines her phrases with the final, E. There are some exceptions. Notably, the piece begins on F, and several phrases also start this way—examples include lines 4 and 6 of the transcription. The phrase ecclesiam ipsi desponsavit unde filios concludes with B, a typical use of the secondary modal focus.

Lines 7 and 8 can be regarded as a single phrase, and a tick barline has been included at the end of line 8 to signify this.

While it might be possible to read the phrasing differently according to the lyrics, I have chosen to follow the musical structure, especially where the opening notes of a line repeat.

Further Resources for O virgo Ecclesia

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 250 and 314-15.
For a discography of this piece, see the comprehensive list by Pierre-F. Roberge: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography

Footnotes

^[1] See Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine (Univ. of California Press, 1987 / 1997), p. 236. ↩
^[2] All quotes from Scivias are from the trans. of Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (New York: Paulist Press, 1990); Latin text ed. Führkötter and Carlevaris, CCCM 43 and 43a (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978). ↩
^[3] See Nathaniel M. Campbell, “The prophetess and the pope: St. Hildegard of Bingen, Pope Benedict XVI, and prophetic visions of church reform,” postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 10:1 (2019), 22-35; online here. ↩
^[4] Newman, Symphonia, p. 315; and eadem, Sister of Wisdom, pp. 237-8. ↩
^[5] Cf. Letter 149r to Werner of Kirchheim in The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, Vol. 2, trans. Joseph L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman (Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 92-4; and The Book of Divine Works 3.5.16, trans. Nathaniel M. Campbell (Catholic University of America Press, 2018), pp. 447-450. ↩
^[6] See Letters 52 and 52r in The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, Vol. 1, trans. Joseph L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman (Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 127-30. ↩
^[7] See Letter 23 in The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, Vol. 1, pp. 76-80. ↩

Votive Antiphon for the Dedication of a Church (D 170r-v, R 472va)Back to Table of Contents
by Hildegard of Bingen

Nunc gaudeant materna viscera
Ecclesie,
quia in superna
simphonia filii eius
in sinum suum collocati sunt.
Unde, o turpissime
serpens, confusus es, quoniam
quos tua estimatio in visceribus
suis habuit
nunc fulgent in sanguine Filii Dei,
et ideo laus tibi sit, Rex altissime.
Alleluia.

Now let the Church’s mother womb
rejoice!
For in the heavens’
symphony her children
are gathered to her bosom.
O vile snake,
you are confounded,
for those your hollow reckoning had thought
it clutched within its guts
now sparkle in the blood of God’s Son—
praise be to you, the King most high!
Alleluia!

Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.

Commentary: Themes and Theology
by Nathaniel M. Campbell

This antiphon completes the arc of its pair in the collection, O virgo Ecclesia, by affirming the resolution to the crisis described in the previous piece. This connection between the two antiphons is both thematic and musical. While O virgo Ecclesia is written with lower pitches in E mode, this C mode antiphon ranges much higher, as befits the thematic restoration of the celestial harmony. Meanwhile, the two antiphons deploy very similar melodic lines (adjusted for their respective modes) to match their shared textual elements: the two phrases Sed o quam preciosus est sanguis Salvatoris, / qui in vexillo regis (p. 1, line 8-p.2, line 1 in O virgo Ecclesia) each outline a similar melody followed by nunc fulgent in sanguine Filii Dei in the antiphon above (p. 2, line 3). Thematically, the resolution here rests on the same two key elements: the restoration of the Church’s children within the heavenly symphony, and their gleaming salvation from the Devil’s clutches by the blood of Christ. As with O virgo Ecclesia, these elements respond both to Hildegard’s cosmic vision of salvation and to the specific historical context that we can conjecture for this pair of antiphons.

Barbara Newman’s suggestion that Hildegard is writing in veiled response to Arnold of Brescia’s revolt helps to explain several elements of this antiphon (see Symphonia, p. 315). At the climax of his response to Arnold’s revolt, Pope Adrian IV put the city of Rome under interdict during Holy Week of 1155. This means that as the Church remembered the drama of Christ’s death and resurrection, the music that would usually accompany her most elaborate liturgies was silenced. This antiphon’s restoration of the heavenly symphony alludes to the resolution of the crisis, when the interdict was lifted. Meanwhile, the concluding “Alleluia!” of the antiphon alludes to the specific timing of that resolution, at Easter.

Yet the antiphon works equally well without reference to a specific historical circumstance, because for Hildegard, the restoration of celestial music is a hallmark of Christ’s restoration of life, a synaesthetic collaboration of light and sound and Word:

And you see a serene Man coming forth from this radiant dawn, Who pours out His brightness into the darkness; and it drives Him back with great force, so that He pours out the redness of blood and whiteness of pallor into it, and strikes the darkness such a strong blow that the person who is lying in it is touched by Him, takes on a shining appearance, and walks out of it upright. This is the Word of God, imperishably incarnate in the purity of unstained virginity and born without pain, and yet not separated from the Father. How? While the Son of God was being born in the world from a mother, He was still in Heaven in the Father; and at this the angels suddenly trembled and sang the sweetest praises of rejoicing. And, living in the world without stain of sin, He sent out into the darkness of unbelief His clear and blessed teachings and salvation; but, rejected by the unbelieving people and led to His passion, He poured out his beautiful blood and knew in His body the darkness of death. And thus conquering the Devil, he delivered from Hell his elect, who were held prostrate there, and by His redeeming touch brought them back to the inheritance they had lost in Adam. As they were returning to their inheritance timbrels and harps and all kinds of music burst forth, because humankind, who had lain in perdition but now stood upright in blessedness, had been freed by heavenly power and escaped from death.
—Scivias II.1.13^[1]

As Hildegard explained when responding to the interdict placed on her own monastery, this restoration of the inheritance lost in Adam was the restoration of the Spirit’s voice, the living breath that inspires the children of the Church to sing as the angels sing:

When we consider these things carefully, we recall that man needed the voice of the living Spirit, but Adam lost this divine voice through disobedience. For while he was still innocent, before his transgression, his voice blended fully with the voices of the angels in their praise of God. Angels are called spirits from that Spirit which is God, and thus they have such voices by virtue of their spiritual nature. But Adam lost that angelic voice which he had in paradise.
(…)
Consider, too, that just as the body of Jesus Christ was born of the purity of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, so, too, the canticle of praise, reflecting celestial harmony, is rooted in the Church through the Holy Spirit. The body is the vestment of the spirit, which has a living voice, and so it is proper for the body, in harmony with the soul, to use its voice to sing praises to God.^[2]

The transition from Virgin Mother to Virgin Mother, from Mary to the Church, is another hallmark of Hildegard’s theology. We noticed in O virgo Ecclesia, for example, that Ecclesia took the place of Mary beneath the beam of the Cross in Hildegard’s vision of the Crucifixion. The analogous relationship between the two comes to the fore in Hildegard’s first vision of the Church in Scivias II.3 (ch. 9):

And on [Ecclesia’s] breast shines a red glow like the dawn; for the virginity of the Most Blessed Virgin when she brought forth the Son of God glows with the most ardent devotion in the hearts of the faithful. And you hear a sound of all kinds of music singing around her, “Like the dawn, greatly sparkling” [quasi aurora valde rutilans]; for, as you are now given to understand, all believers should join with their whole wills in celebrating the virginity of that spotless Virgin in the Church.^[3]

These two Virgins conceive and give birth by the power of the Holy Spirit, and in the Church, the means of that rebirth are the waters of baptism that flowed mingled with blood from the Crucified’s side. Thus, Hildegard’s heavenly voice continues:

And thus the Church is the virginal mother of all Christians, since by the mystery of the Holy Spirit she conceives and bears them, offering them to God so that they are called the children of God. And as the Holy Spirit overshadowed the Blessed Mother, so that she miraculously conceived and painlessly bore the Son of God and yet remained a Virgin, so does the Holy Spirit illumine the Church, happy mother of believers, so that without corruption she conceives and bears children naturally, yet remains a virgin.
—Scivias II.3.12

One final element of this antiphon worth noting is the contrast between the Church’s womb (viscera) and the Devil’s “guts” (visceribus). The Devil’s plan had been to ensnare the human race, stealing them away from God and his Church (as in O virgo Ecclesia) and swallowing them up in his greed. But his plan was flawed, because he made an assumption (estimatio) that turned out not to be true. As Hildegard explains in The Book of Divine Works 3.4.5:

Within his own deceit [the devil] assumed that humankind, now wallowing in such filth, could not enter the kingdom of heaven, for the children of fornication could not be God’s people, nor could he be their God. The devil indeed takes great pleasure in the smut of the flesh’s gyrations and says to himself, “I’ve yanked humankind from their glorious place and thrust them into the deepest filth! There’s no place left in them for God, for his utter cleanliness neither wants nor accepts any filth. That’s also why humankind will remain in my quarters.”

But God concealed from the ancient serpent how he wanted to free humankind: the dirtiness that bubbled up at the serpent’s trick he washed away through his Son, and through him blotted out the wounds that lust had inflicted upon humankind.^[4]

All the Devil saw in humans was the transmission of original sin through procreation, and so the blood of human birth was a blood that tied them in bondage to him. But the Church’s womb is an altogether different kind of birth: bathed in the blood of the Cross, it is the rebirth of baptism, the rebirth unto eternal life.

Transcription and Music Notes
by Beverly Lomer

Mode: C
Range: G below final to C an octave above
Setting: primarily neumatic and syllabic

In this antiphon, C, the modal final, is the primary grammatical marker. Hildegard also deploys A to begin phrases on the last line of page 1 and line 2 of page 2. All phrases end on C. Lines 4 and 5 are intended as one phrase, so as to keep the C as the outlining tone. A tick barline has been added to indicate this. It does make for a long phrase, however, and thus it might mean some adjustments for performers in order to breathe.

There are considerable small differences between the manuscripts in this work that have resulted in many ossia staves. This was done in order to reduce clutter. On line 4 on page 1, there is one note that might need clarification. Parentheses were placed around the pitch D, with the note that this pitch is only found in Dendermonde. The next note, an E in Dendermonde, is F in the Riesenkodex.

As always, performers are welcome to adjust the breathing pauses and to reshape phrases in accordance with their individual interpretation.

Further Resources for Nunc gaudeant

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 252 and 315-16.
For a discography of this piece, see the comprehensive list by Pierre-F. Roberge: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography

Footnotes

^[1] All quotes from Scivias are adapted from the translation of Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (Paulist Press, 1990); Latin text ed. Führkötter and Carlevaris, CCCM 43 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978). ↩
^[2] Letter 23, Hildegard to the prelates at Mainz. Adapted from The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen. Vol. I, trans. Joseph L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman (Oxford Univ. Press, 1994), pp. 76-80; Latin text in Epistolarium I, ed. L. Van Acker, CCCM 91 (Brepols, 1991), pp. 61-6. ↩
^[3] The words of the song that Hildegard hears ringing around the Virgin’s central place upon the Church’s breast are from the antiphon for the Magnificat from First Vespers on the Feast of the Assumption: “Virgo prudentissima, quo progrederis quasi aurora valde rutilans? Filia Sion, tota formosa et suavis es, pulchra ut luna electa ut sol.” (See the entry for this antiphon in the Cantus database and at ChantBlog). ↩
^[4] St. Hildegard of Bingen, The Book of Divine Works 3.4.5, trans. Nathaniel M. Campbell (The Catholic University of America Press, 2018), pp. 400-401. ↩

Detail of the Celestial Bodies, from
The Book of Divine Works, 1.2
(Biblioteca Statale di Lucca, MS 1942, fol. 9r)

In honor of the celestial conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, we present Hildegard of Bingen’s description of the two planets from her cosmological vision in The Book of Divine Works. Saturn is “the highest and first celestial body,” and Jupiter is the second in the circle of pure ether, illustrated in the Lucca manuscript as the top two stars in the band of red flames (the sun is the large star in the band of black fire just below):

And from the middle of the sign of the highest and first celestial body that is marked out above the head of that image, there go out certain rays, one of which descends to the sign of the sun. This signifies that rays of strength go forth from the strength of this first celestial body, which appears first in the east because it is from there that the daylight comes forth. One of these rays is directed to the sun, succoring and tempering its course so that it does not discharge its fire beyond measure. Furthermore, one beams to the right foot of the crab’s head that proceeds from the leopard’s head. For as this celestial body arises from the part opposite that wind, it emits its ray to strengthen the latter’s egress as it shifts forwards and back and proceeds from the principal east wind to which it is collateral; and it holds it back with its stability, lest it proceed further than God has allowed it. Finally, one extends to the right horn of the stag’s head that comes from the same leopard’s head. For another ray comes from that part of this celestial body to oppose the strength of this wind that comes out there from the principal wind, restraining its shocks so that it emits its blasts according to the correct measure of fitting necessity, like a man who restrains the arms of his enemy, to keep him from harming either himself or others. Thus one part of creation is restrained by another part of creation, and likewise each is sustained by the other.

From the middle of the sign of the second celestial body a certain ray bends down as if to the sign of the sun, for this celestial body reveals its power when it touches the sun with its ray, soothing it to be mild. And another goes forth to the lamb’s head that comes from the sign of the lion’s head. For from its strong part, it extends a ray of its brilliance to the beginning of the collateral wind that signifies gentleness and proceeds from the major wind of the southern region. It holds onto that wind, so that rather than transforming its mildness to ferocity, it continues in its course without any aggressiveness. Another is directed to the aforesaid line that stretches in the firmament from the beginning of the eastern part of the wheel as if to the end of its western part and facing its northern region, at a spot above where the lamb’s head that goes out from the sign of the bear’s head is placed. This signifies that a ray comes from the firm course of that brilliance and is led to the course of another collateral wind that goes out from the major north wind. It resists that wind with its moderation, so that it emits its blasts with equal measure.

—The Book of Divine Works 1.2.32 (pp. 84-85)

Hildegard also allegorizes these planets and their celestial rays, because for her, all of creation has a moral meaning, encouraging and strengthening us to grow in the virtues:

Moreover, from the middle of the sign of the highest and first celestial body that appears marked out above the head of that image, there go out certain rays, one of which descends to the sign of the sun. This is because the virtues spring from the choicest and outstanding gift of the spirit of wisdom, which surpasses the entire height of human understanding. From them, a holy breathing forth descends to the sign of the sun—to the spirit of fortitude—to which it allies itself, so that the fortitude of holiness might enter wisely into the faithful, lest they foolishly presume to undertake a task they cannot complete. But one beams to the right foot of the crab’s head that proceeds from the leopard’s head. This shows that in the salvation of souls, the breathing forth of the spirit of wisdom, which is made manifest for the correct advance of the trust that rises up from the fear of the Lord, spreads itself out and fortifies that trust, so that, with the fear of the Lord, it might have confidence in God and not think his mercy worthless or for naught. Furthermore, one stretches itself to the right horn of the stag’s head that comes from the same leopard’s head; for in chastisement, the breathing forth of rightness reveals itself to the fortitude of faith that also arises from the fear of the Lord. It stretches itself out and leads that fortitude to the right path, so that it turns itself away from the devil’s devices while unceasingly chastising humankind for their ignorance of the truth.

From the middle of the sign of the second celestial body a certain ray bends down as if to the sign of the sun. This signifies that an outpouring of intelligence from the abundant fullness of the spirit of understanding advances also towards the spirit of fortitude. This also shows that each faithful person understands acutely that he ought with a strong mind to serve his Creator and to renounce the devil. And another goes forth to the lamb’s head that comes from the sign of the lion’s head. For as a person walks successfully to his Creator, the breathing forth from the spirit of understanding extends towards the patience that proceeds from the judgment of God. This shows that, when a person imitates patience, he ought to bear both prosperity and tribulation with equanimity. And another is directed to the aforesaid line that stretches in the firmament from the beginning of the eastern part of the wheel as if to the end of its western part and facing its northern region, at a spot above where the lamb’s head that goes out from the sign of the bear’s head is placed. For as each faithful person shuns what is contrary to his soul, the breathing forth from the spirit of understanding comes on the other side to the rightness of justice, which extends from the origin of good deeds that persist under God’s power all the way to their fulfillment. With the assistance from above of the patience produced from bodily distress, it separates the devil’s tricks from just works, and admonishes a person that, when the judgment of God chastises him, he ought to endure that chastisement patiently, lest he be stricken even more sharply.

—The Book of Divine Works 1.2.34 (pp. 91-92)

Antiphon in evangelio (likely for the Benedictus at Lauds) for St. UrsulaBack to Table of Contents
and Companions (D 168r, R 472rb) by Hildegard of Bingen

Et ideo
puelle iste per summum virum
sustentabantur,
vexillate
in regali prole
virginee nature.

And so,
these girls were by the Supreme Man
sustained,
to fly their flag
with virgin nature’s
Royal Son.

Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.

A Note on Liturgical Usage

The rubric for this antiphon in the manuscripts (in evangelio) indicates that it accompanies the Benedictus, or the Canticle of Zechariah from the Gospel of Luke (1:68–79). Because that Canticle would the final piece of psalmody in the Lauds service, this antiphon should properly come at the end of the sequence that Hildegard composed for the Office.

Further Resources for Et ideo puelle iste

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 236 and 309-11.
Berschin, Walter. “Eine Offiziendichtung in der Symphonia Hildegards von Bingen: Ursula und die Elftausend Jungfrauen (carm. 44).” In Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of her Thought and Art. Ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke. London: The Warburg Institute, 1998, pp. 157-62.
Flanagan, Sabina. “Die Heiligen Hildegard, Elisabeth, Ursula und die elftausend Jungfrauen.” In Tiefe des Gotteswissens - Schönheit der Sprachgestalt bei Hildegard von Bingen. Ed. Margot Schmidt. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 1995, pp. 209-22.
Flynn, William. “Reading Hildegard of Bingen’s Antiphons for the 11,000 Virgin-Martyrs of Cologne: Rhetorical ductus and Liturgical Rubrics.” Nottingham Medieval Studies 56 (2012), pp. 174-89.
Flynn, William. “Hildegard (1098-1179) and the Virgin Martyrs of Cologne.” In The Cult of St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins. Ed. Jane Cartwright. University of Wales Press, 2016, pp. 93-118.
Walter, Peter. “Die Heiligen in der Dichtung der hl. Hildegard von Bingen.” In Hildegard von Bingen, 1179-1979. Festschrift zum 800. Todestag der Heiligen. Ed. Anton Ph. Brück. Mainz: Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 1979, pp. 211-37, at 223-29.
For a discography of this piece, see the comprehensive list by Pierre-F. Roberge: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography

Antiphon at Lauds (likely for Psalm 150) for St. Ursula and CompanionsBack to Table of Contents
(D 168r-v, R 472rb) by Hildegard of Bingen

Sed diabolus in invidia sua
istud irrisit,
qua nullum opus Dei
intactum dimisit.

But envious,
the devil mocks,
which leaves no work of God
untouched.

Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.

Transcription and Music Notes
by Beverly Lomer

Mode: D
Range: A below the final to D an octave above
Setting: syllabic, one melisma

This is a short piece in which D is the primary tonal marker. A is used secondarily. It is possible to consider that it is composed of two longer phrases, Lines 1-2 and 3-4 of the transcription, in which each phrase would begin and end on the modal final. There are discrepancies between the manuscripts. Line 3 begins with quod in D, but is corrected to qua in R.

A Note on Liturgical Usage

In line with the expanded psalmody we have proposed for this Office (see Introduction), we suggest that this antiphon would have been paired with Psalm 150, the last of the final trio of psalms at festal Lauds. William Flynn has suggested that the devil's mockery of the virgin martyrs becomes a mockery of the act of praising God to which all creation (God's work) is called in the psalm. This universalizes the specific story of Ursula and her companions (a move that Hildegard makes repeatedly in her compositions for them) and sets the stage for the final triumpth of the antiphon for the Gospel canticle, Et ideo puelle iste .

Further Resources for Et ideo puelle iste

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 236 and 309-11.
Berschin, Walter. “Eine Offiziendichtung in der Symphonia Hildegards von Bingen: Ursula und die Elftausend Jungfrauen (carm. 44).” In Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of her Thought and Art. Ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke. London: The Warburg Institute, 1998, pp. 157-62.
Flanagan, Sabina. “Die Heiligen Hildegard, Elisabeth, Ursula und die elftausend Jungfrauen.” In Tiefe des Gotteswissens - Schönheit der Sprachgestalt bei Hildegard von Bingen. Ed. Margot Schmidt. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 1995, pp. 209-22.
Flynn, William. “Reading Hildegard of Bingen’s Antiphons for the 11,000 Virgin-Martyrs of Cologne: Rhetorical ductus and Liturgical Rubrics.” Nottingham Medieval Studies 56 (2012), pp. 174-89.
Flynn, William. “Hildegard (1098-1179) and the Virgin Martyrs of Cologne.” In The Cult of St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins. Ed. Jane Cartwright. University of Wales Press, 2016, pp. 93-118.
Walter, Peter. “Die Heiligen in der Dichtung der hl. Hildegard von Bingen.” In Hildegard von Bingen, 1179-1979. Festschrift zum 800. Todestag der Heiligen. Ed. Anton Ph. Brück. Mainz: Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 1979, pp. 211-37, at 223-29.
For a discography of this piece, see the comprehensive list by Pierre-F. Roberge: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography

by Nathaniel M. Campbell

Hildegard composed an elaborate series of eight antiphons for use in an expanded edition of the office of Lauds for the feast of St. Ursula and the 11,000 virgin-martyrs of Cologne. This is the largest single office that she composed and indicates the special value that she placed on developing the feast of St. Ursula into an important celebration affirming the life and mission of the religious women (virgins) of her monastery.

Reconstructed Order for the Office

The Table of Contents for our edition of Hildegard’s Symphonia follows the ordering found in the manuscripts and given in the modern editions. However, for reading or performance order, we highly recommend the reconstruction proposed by musicologist William Flynn, which makes the most sense out of the difficulties of the manuscript presentation. The following table summarizes this suggested order of service according to the likely usage of Hildegard’s time and place, showing which psalm or scriptural canticle would have been paired with each antiphon; as well as the corresponding order in each of the two manuscripts and in Barbara Newman’s edition of the Symphonia:

Antiphon	Psalm / Canticle	Dendermonde	Riesencodex	Newman
1. Studium divinitatis	Ps 92(93)	1 (167v)	1 (471vb)	1
2. Unde quocumque	Ps 99(100) (secular cursus) or Ps 117(118) (monastic cursus)	2 (167v)	2 (472ra)	2
3. De patria etiam earum	Ps 62(63)	3 (168r)	3 (472ra)	3
4. Deus enim in prima muliere presignavit	Benedicite (Dn 3:57-88, 56)	4 (168r)	4 (472ra)	4
5. Aer enim volat	Ps 148	5 (168r)	5 (472ra)	5
6. Deus enim rorem in illas misit	Ps 149	7 (168r)	7 (472rb)	7
7. Sed diabolus	Ps 150	8 (168r-v)	8 (472rb)	8
8. Et ideo puelle iste	Gospel: Benedictus (Lk 1:68–79)	6 (168r)	6 (472ra)	6

A typical Lauds office would normally only have five antiphons for the psalmody (which includes the canticle Benedicite taken from the expanded Septuagint / Vulgate text of the book of Daniel), plus an antiphon for the Benedictus, the Canticle of Zechariah from the Gospel of Luke. But Hildegard has composed a tightly woven series of eight antiphons that tell a coherent narrative, indicating that they should all go together in a single office. Flynn suggests that Hildegard invoked an alternative psalmody known to have been used sometimes in twelfth-century monastic communities, which expands the final psalm unit of Lauds (a combined singing of Pss 148-150) into its three individual psalms, each with its own antiphon. Furthermore, he believes it likely that, because the community of Augustinian nuns in Cologne dedicated specifically to the cult of St. Ursula followed what is known as a secular rather than monastic usage (cursus) for the divine office, Hildegard may have borrowed some slight modifications from the secular cursus in determining the psalms to be sung for festal Lauds.

The manuscript ordering for the antiphons may further be designed to allow for easy navigation when recycling a subset of them for Second Vespers, sung at the end of the day that would open with the Lauds office. A common monastic practice for Second Vespers of major feasts was to reuse the first, second, third, and fifth antiphons from Lauds. The placement of the Gospel antiphon after the fifth antiphon, rather than at the end of the series, helps demarcate this subset. Finally, this reconstruction allows the triumph of the Gospel antiphon, Et ideo puelle iste, to have the last word, rather than the invidiousness of Sed diabolus. In this way, the narrative produced by the antiphon series coheres with Hildegard’s overall ideas about the virginal mission shared between St. Ursula’s ancient band and her own monastery.

References

Flynn, William. “Reading Hildegard of Bingen’s Antiphons for the 11,000 Virgin-Martyrs of Cologne: Rhetorical ductus and Liturgical Rubrics.” Nottingham Medieval Studies 56 (2012), pp. 174-89.
Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 236 and 309-11.

Sequence for St. Ursula and Companions (D 168v-169r, R 477rb-vb)Back to Table of Contents
by Hildegard of Bingen

1a. O Ecclesia,
oculi tui similes saphiro sunt,
et aures tue monti Bethel,
et nasus tuus est sicut mons mirre et thuris,
et os tuum quasi sonus aquarum multarum.

1b. In visione vere fidei
Ursula Filium Dei amavit
et virum cum hoc seculo reliquit
et in solem aspexit
atque pulcherrimum iuvenem vocavit, dicens:

2. In multo desiderio desideravi ad te venire
et in celestibus nuptiis tecum sedere,
per alienam viam ad te currens
velut nubes que in purissimo aere currit similis saphiro.

3a. Et postquam Ursula sic dixerat, rumor iste
per omnes populos exiit.

3b. Et dixerunt: Innocentia puellaris ignorantie
nescit quid dicit.

4a. Et ceperunt ludere cum illa
in magna symphonia,
usque dum ignea sarcina
super eam cecidit.

4b. Unde omnes cognoscebant
quia contemptus mundi est sicut mons Bethel.

5. Et cognoverunt etiam
suavissimum odorem mirre et thuris,
quoniam contemptus mundi
super omnia ascendit.

6a. Tunc diabolus membra sua invasit,
que nobilissimos mores in corporibus istis occiderunt.

6b. Et hoc in alta voce omnia elementa audierunt
et ante thronum Dei dixerunt:

7a. Wach! rubicundus sanguis innocentis agni
in desponsatione sua effusus est.

7b. Hoc audiant omnes celi
et in summa symphonia laudent Agnum Dei,
quia guttur serpentis antiqui
in istis margaritis
materie Verbi Dei suffocatum est.

1a. O Church!
Like sapphire are your eyes,
Mt. Bethel are your ears,
your nose a mount of myrrh and frankincense,
your mouth the sound of many waters.

1b. In true faith’s vision
did Ursula with God’s Son fall in love—
a husband with the world did she abandon,
to gaze instead upon the sun
and call upon the Fairest Youth to say:

2a. “With deep desire have I desired to come to you,
to sit with you at heaven’s marriage feast—
I’m racing by a different way to you,
like a sapphire cloud that races ‘cross the clearest sky.”

3a. When Ursula had made this declaration,
report of it went out through all the people.

3b. And they declared, “The innocence of girlish ignorance
knows not of what it speaks.”

4a. And they began in concert to
make fun of her—
until the fiery weight
fell on her shoulders.

4b. For then they recognized
that such contempt for the world is as Mt. Bethel.

5. They also recognized
the sweetest secent of myrrh and frankincense,
for contempt for the world
mounts over all.

6a. But then the devil seized their limbs,
to slay the virgins’ noblest bearings with their bodies.

6b. And this with piercing cry heard all the elements
and ‘fore God’s throne declared:

7a. Ach! The scarlet blood of the innocent Lamb
to pledge his troth is shed.

7b. And all the heavens hear this
and praise the Lamb of God in symphony supreme,
for the ancient serpent’s throat
is choked upon these pearls
compiled from the Word of God.

Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.

A Note on the Text
by Nathaniel M. Campbell

Our edition of the text departs from Newman’s by introducing the paired strophes that are traditional features of the sequence. Hildegard never composed any regular sequences, in which each verse pair uses the same melodic line. But within the irregular form of her sequences, paired strophes do usually share some musical parallels (cf. O ignis Spiritus paracliti). In this sequence, these repeated motives usually come at the opening of each verse pair. The beginning of each verse is, moreover, marked in the manuscripts with a rubricated initial, and we have followed those divisions. Newman’s edition missed the initial that marks Et dixerunt (verse 3b above) as its own verse, and thus she combines verses 3a and 3b together (verse 4 in her edition).

Verses 2 and 5 are exceptions to the standard form, as the verses as marked in the manuscripts are musical orphans. However, both contain internal sets of repeated motives that could be understood as fulfilling the sequence form. In Verse 2, the melody of the final line (velut nubes que in purissimo aere currit similis saphiro) makes variations on the opening line (In multo desiderio desideravi ad te venire). The melodic parallels are less thorough in Verse 5, but the use of the common leap of a fifth (A-E) at the opening of the verse and then again with quoniam would suggest a possible point for construing a strophic subdivision.

Transcription and Music Notes
by Beverly Lomer

Mode: A
Range: E below the final to C an octave and a third above
Setting: primarily syllabic

Musically, this lone sequence is fairly straightforward. The primary tones used for punctuation/phrase delineation are A and E. The interval A to E is commonly used to open phrases.

There are quite a few discrepancies between the sources, and so in order to make reading easier, I have inserted a number of ossia staves rather than notes above the lines. As is our custom, the only capital letters included in the text of the transcription are those that also appear in the manuscripts; no editorial ficta have been added.

It would likely be useful for singers to compare the sources regarding the use of Bb so as to better inform their decisions as to where to add Bb.

Further Resources for O Ecclesia

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 238-244 and 312-314.
Flanagan, Sabina. “Die Heiligen Hildegard, Elisabeth, Ursula und die elftausend Jungfrauen.” In Tiefe des Gotteswissens - Schönheit der Sprachgestalt bei Hildegard von Bingen. Ed. Margot Schmidt. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 1995, pp. 209-22.
Flynn, William. “Hildegard (1098-1179) and the Virgin Martyrs of Cologne.” In The Cult of St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins. Ed. Jane Cartwright. University of Wales Press, 2016, pp. 93-118.
Martin, J., and G. Hair. “O Ecclesia: the Text and Music of Hildegard of Bingen's Sequence for St. Ursula.” Tjurunga: an Australasian Benedictine Review 30 (1986), 3–62.
Walter, Peter. “Die Heiligen in der Dichtung der hl. Hildegard von Bingen.” In Hildegard von Bingen, 1179-1979. Festschrift zum 800. Todestag der Heiligen. Ed. Anton Ph. Brück. Mainz: Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 1979, pp. 211-37, at 223-29.
For a discography of this piece, see the comprehensive list by Pierre-F. Roberge: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography

Hymn for St. Ursula and Companions (D 169r-170r, R 477vb-478ra)Back to Table of Contents
by Hildegard of Bingen

1. Cum vox sanguinis Ursule
et innocentis turbe eius
ante thronum Dei sonuit,
antiqua prophetia venit per radicem Mambre
in vera ostensione Trinitatis
et dixit:

2. Iste sanguis nos tangit,
nunc omnes gaudeamus.

3. Et postea venit
congregatio Agni,
per arietem in spinis pendentem, et dixit:

4. Laus sit in Ierusalem
per ruborem huius sanguinis.

5. Deinde venit sacrificium vituli
quod vetus lex ostendebat,
sacrificium laudis
circumamicta varietate, et que faciem Dei
Moysi obnubilabat, dorsum illi ostendens.

6. Hoc sunt sacerdotes
qui per linguas suas
Deum ostendunt et perfecte eum videre non possunt.

7. Et dixerunt: O nobilissima turba, virgo ista
que in terris Ursula vocatur in summis Columba
nominatur, quia innocentem turbam ad se collegit.

8. O Ecclesia, tu es
laudabilis in ista turba.

9, Turba magna, quam incombustus rubus
(quem Moyses viderat) significat,
et quam Deus in prima radice plantaverat
in homine quem de limo formaverat,
ut sine commixtione viri viveret,
cum clarissima voce clamavit
in purissimo auro, thopazio,
et saphiro circumamicta in auro.

10. Nunc gaudeant omnes celi
et omnes populi cum illis ornentur.
Amen.

1. When the voice of Ursula’s blood
and of her innocent brood
resounded ‘fore God’s throne,
the ancient prophecy came forth by Mamre’s root—
a true disclosing of the Trinity—
and spoke:

2. “This blood is touching us—
now let us all rejoice!”

3. And next came forth
the congregation of the Lamb—
by the ram caught in the thorns—and spoke:

4. “Praise in Jerusalem
because of this blood’s scarlet gleam!”

5. Then came the sacrificial calf
the ancient Law revealed—
a sacrifice of praise—
the Law, girded with many colors, hid God’s face
from Moses and revealed his back.

6. This means the priests
who by their tongues
reveal God even though they cannot see him perfectly.

7. They spoke: “O noblest brood, this Virgin’s name
on earth was ‘Ursula’—the little bear—
but now on high she’s called ‘Columba’—dove—
because she gathered round her innocent brood.”

8. O Church, your praise
is with this brood!

9. Great brood—the burning bush
that Moses saw, its sign;
and God had planted it within the primal root
in Man he’d made from mud,
to live without man’s commingling—
with clearest voice they cried
in purest gold and topaz,
and sapphire set in gold.

10. Now let all the heavens rejoice,
and all the peoples be adorned with them!
Amen.

Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.

Transcription and Music Notes
by Beverly Lomer

A mode
Range: D below the final to A an octave above
Setting: primarily syllabic

In this hymn, Hildegard applies a mixture of tonal punctuations. While A is the predominant tonal demarcator, and a number of phrases open with the leap from A to the E above, she also uses E - a standard alternative. Less usual are the phrases that open with C, G, and F. Phrase lengths are also quite uneven (not atypical for this form), and thus performers might use their own discretion about combining some of the smaller units. The only caution would be to not place the A-to-E interval mid phrase, as it is clearly an opening gesture.

There are several minor differences between the sources and two more extensive ones, which are represented by ossia staves.

Further Resources for Cum vox sangunis Ursule

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 244-46 and 312-14.
Flanagan, Sabina. “Die Heiligen Hildegard, Elisabeth, Ursula und die elftausend Jungfrauen.” In Tiefe des Gotteswissens - Schönheit der Sprachgestalt bei Hildegard von Bingen. Ed. Margot Schmidt. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 1995, pp. 209-22.
Flynn, William T. “Hildegard (1098-1179) and the Virgin Martyrs of Cologne.” In The Cult of St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins. Ed. Jane Cartwright. University of Wales Press, 2016, pp. 93-118.
Flynn, William T. “Ductus figuratus et subtilis: Rhetorical interventions for women in two twelfth-century liturgies.” Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 78.1 (2010): 250-280, at pp. 264-275.
Walter, Peter. “Die Heiligen in der Dichtung der hl. Hildegard von Bingen.” In Hildegard von Bingen, 1179-1979. Festschrift zum 800. Todestag der Heiligen. Ed. Anton Ph. Brück. Mainz: Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 1979, pp. 211-37, at 223-29.;i>
For a discography of this piece, see the comprehensive list by Pierre-F. Roberge: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography

Votive Antiphon for the Dedication of a Church (R 472va) by Hildegard of BingenBack to Table of Contents

O orzchis Ecclesia,
armis divinis precincta
et iacincto ornata, tu es caldemia
stigmatum loifolum
et urbs scientiarum.
O, o, tu es
etiam crizanta
in alto sono et es
chorzta gemma.

O Church immense,
with arms divine enfortressed
and jacinth set: you are the sweet aroma
of peoples sealed by wounds,
and the city of all knowledge.
O, o, you are
anointed too
in soaring song, you are
a sparkling gem.

Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.

Commentary
by Nathaniel M. Campbell

This is one of Hildegard’s most noted antiphons, because it is her only musical composition (and indeed her only piece of writing outside of the glossary) that uses words from her Lingua Ignota, her “Unknown Language.” This invented language is preserved in a glossary of some one thousand words (all nouns) in two manuscripts (the Riesencodex, fols. 461v-464v; and Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussicher Kulturbesitz, Ms. lat. qu. 674, fols. 58r-62r)—but to see how the language worked in action, we have only this antiphon for evidence. Hildegard’s invented words in this antiphon are given the following Latin glosses in two manuscripts that preserve its text (the notated version later in the Riesencodex has no glosses):

	Gloss in Riesencodex, fol. 405va	Gloss in Stuttgart, Cod. theol. et phil.qt. 4 253, fol. 28r
orzchis	immensa	immensa	“immense”
caldemia	aroma	aroma	“aroma”
loifolum	populorum	populorum	“of the peoples”
crizanta	ornata	uncta	“adorned” / “anointed”
chorzta	choruscans	chorusca	“sparkling”

Nativity, with virgin and unicorn below, from Floreffe Bible, 12th century.

Scivias 2.5:
The Orders of the Church.
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 66r

When these invented words combine with the rest of the Latin text, we find a panoply of synesthetic images projecting a characteristically Hildegardian vision. The imagery is dense and cryptic, moving—as Hildegard’s poetic symbols usually do—from register to register without always betraying the connections. It draws upon the Church as the Heavenly Jerusalem, the city described in the Apocalypse of St. John as a Bride adorned, her walls set with precious gems (Rev. 21) and echoing with the heavenly symphony. This is the same towering figure of the Church presented in Scivias 2.5, immense and powerful, yet also gilded and graceful. As imagined in the illustration Hildegard designed for that vision, she appears with golden flames reaching up behind her shoulders like the crenellations of a fortress. Meanwhile, she holds at her breast Hildegard’s virgin nuns as they sing their liturgical songs, adorned like Ecclesia as brides in silver-white veils and golden coronets.

The jacinth of the antiphon is both the deep-red gem found in the breastplate of Israel’s high priest (Ex. 28:19) and the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev. 21:20), as well as the deep-purple or blue flower known as the hyacinth. Hildegard saw that blue color of hyacinth intermingled with the red glow of dawn from Ecclesia’s throat to navel in Scivias 2.5, illustrated in the manuscript image with gold, but echoed also in the deep-red cloaks of the figure of Virginitas and two of the virgin nuns on either side of her, as well as in the blue-colored vestments of a bishop (identifiable by his pallium) to the left and behind Virginitas and a nun to the right. This figure of the Church possesses both the strength of priestly authority symbolized by the jacinth gemstone and the virginal purity with which Hildegard invests hyacinth blue.^[1]

The imagery of the “sparkling gem” (chorzta gemma) also helps us begin to unravel one of the antiphon’s more cryptic “unknown” lines, the caldemia / stigmatum loifolum. The glosses for caldemia and loifolum are relatively clear (“aroma” and “of the peoples”), but the Latin word in between them (stigmatum) is complicated. Stigmata are marks or brands, originally cuts made into a person to form identifying scars. They are also, as we know from the experiences of later holy people like St. Francis of Assisi, the marks of Christ’s wounds that appear in the flesh of his followers, to mark them as his own. The range of ideas that can be wrapped up in this phrase is thus diverse. At one end, you have the marks of identity with which the Church, through baptism, brands her citizens. These are fragrant, in order to announce their virtue (the odor virtutum is one of Hildegard’s recurrent images: cf. verse 2a of O ignis Spiritus paracliti; verse 6 of O Ierusalem; and verse 5 of O Ecclesia); but also to announce the particular power of virginity, channeled through the Virgin Mary (cf. O quam magnum miraculum and verse 3 of O viridissima virga) and the Virgin Church into the virgins of Hildegard’s monastery. In another vein, those marks of identity are the wounds of the martyrs, which become the redolent blooms that adorn the Church in the responsory Vos flores rosarum. Meanwhile, at the other end of the range of images, they are the scars of sin, wounds for which the Church herself supplies fragrant, medicinal balm.^[2] Christ himself pleads his Father in the finale of the Ordo Virtutum that these, his wounds (vulnera mea) should be transformed so that his body might appear “full of gems” (plenum gemmarum). The polyvalent logic of Hildegard’s highly compressed visionary language forestalls any attempts to pin down just one of these meanings. They all are at play.

In fact, the very nature of language itself becomes a theme of this antiphon because of the use of words from the Lingua Ignota. It could very well serve as Exhibit A alongside Hildegard’s apologia for music in the famous Letter 23, written to defend her monastery against an interdict (a ban on sung liturgy) imposed in the last year of her life. There, Hildegard articulated an argument for the saving necessity of singing based on her view that before the Fall, Adam’s language was the powerful singing tongue of the angels. Music is the language of heaven, and the Church embodies her heavenly presence and future through singing. Michael Embach has convincingly argued that a fundamental motivation for Hildegard’s invention of the Lingua Ignota was to recapture that prelapsarian Adamic voice.^[3]

This allows us then to make sense of another one of the antiphon’s potential puzzles: the Church as “the city of all knowledge.” Barbara Newman has noted, “from a prophet like Hildegard, who on principle rejected all human teaching, urbs scientiarum is an unexpectedly humanistic title for the New Jerusalem.”^[4] But the restorative nature of the Lingua Ignota indicates that the “sciences” which the Church embodies are not humanistic but divine in origin. This is knowledge restored to its unfallen purity. Hildegard often writes of the confusion wrought in human knowledge by the Fall:

For the knowledge of inner sight teaches a person about divine things, though the flesh opposes it, while blinded knowledge enacts the works of night according to the serpent’s sight, which does not see the light. So too, the serpent turns as many as he can away from the works of light, just as he did with Adam when he clouded the light of living knowledge within him.
—The Book of Divine Works 3.1.2^[5]

It is the “knowledge of inner sight” that the Church contains and administers, with “the light of living knowledge” restored to her by Christ. By using the words of a new language that yearns to recapture the lost voice of primal human rationality, Hildegard’s antiphon celebrates “in soaring song” the power that the Church has to effect that restoration in her members. As Hildegard puts in another of her antiphons for the Church, O choruscans lux stellarum, they thus become “the angels’ partners and citizens with the saints.”

Transcription and Music Notes
by Beverly Lomer

Mode: E
Range: C below the final to E an octave above
Setting: primarily syllabic with several melismas

From a musical perspective, phrases in this work are delineated primarily by the modal final and the pitch B, with two exceptions. The first is found on the second line of the transcription, which begins with G. The second appears on the second-to-the-last phrase in which D is placed on the word in. This is not especially unusual, as Hildegard often dips to the pitch below the final to open a phrase, especially when the ideas between the two are closely related.

For those who prioritize text rhythm, it will be necessary to break with the musical phrases as I have set them up. In particular, there are two instances where this is most apparent. The first concerns the text, O, O, tu es, which from a verse standpoint one might want to make O, O its own phrase. Et es on the second-to-the-last line is treated similarly. The reason for this is that F is not generally used as a grammatical marker in this mode, and by ending the phrases on E, the openings of the following lines, etiam crizanta and chorzta gemma fall on B, the secondary demarcator in this mode. My first inclination was to go with the text, but in looking at it more closely, this would have meant the use of three different musical verse markers, two of which are not the norm for E mode. Hence the decision was made to prioritize the musical outlining.

Further Resources for O orzchis Ecclesia

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 252 and 316-17.
Dronke, Peter. “Hildegard’s Inventions: Aspects of her Language and Imagery,” in Hildegard von Bingen in ihrem historischen Umfeld, ed. Alfred Haverkamp (Mainz: Trierer Historische Forschungen/P. von Zabern, 2000), pp. 299-315, at 306-308.
Higley, Sarah L. Hildegard of Bingen’s Unknown Language. An Edition, Translation, and Discussion (Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), pp. 30-32.
Schnapp, Jeffrey. “Virgin Words: Hildegard of Bingen’s Lingua Ignota and the Development of Imaginary Languages Ancient to Modern,” Exemplaria 3.2 (1991): 267-298, at 292-94.
For a discography of this piece, see the comprehensive list by Pierre-F. Roberge: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography

Footnotes

^[1] For a more detailed argument about Hildegard’s design of the Scivias illustrations, see Nathaniel M. Campbell, “Imago expandit splendorem suum: Hildegard of Bingen’s Visio-Theological Designs in the Rupertsberg Scivias Manuscript,” Eikón / Imago 4 (2013, Vol. 2, No. 2), pp. 1-68, esp. pp. 36-39 and 57-61 (online here); idem, “Picturing Hildegard of Bingen’s Sight: Illuminating Her Visions,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Jennifer Bain (Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 257-259 (online here). ↩
^[2] See Sarah Higley, Hildegard of Bingen’s Unknown Language. An Edition, Translation, and Discussion (Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), p. 31. ↩
^[3] Michael Embach, Die Schriften Hildegards von Bingen: Studien zu ihrer Überlieferung und Rezeption im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2003), pp. 269-271. ↩
^[4] Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley, 1987; 2nd ed., 1997), p. 204. ↩
^[5] St. Hildegard of Bingen, The Book of Divine Works, trans. Nathaniel M. Campbell (Catholic University of America Press, 2018), pp. 377-378. ↩

Votive Antiphon for the Dedication of a Church (R 472vb) by Hildegard of BingenBack to Table of Contents

O choruscans
lux stellarum,
o splendidissima specialis forma
regalium nuptiarum,
o fulgens
gemma, tu es ornata
in alta persona
que non habet maculatam rugam.
Tu es etiam socia angelorum
et civis sanctorum.
Fuge, fuge speluncam
antiqui perditoris,
et veniens veni in palatium regis.

O sparkling,
starry light,
O special, splendid form
of royal marriage,
O flashing
gem, you are adorned
in high nobility,
with neither spot nor blemish marred.
You are the angels’ partner
and a citizen with saints.
Flee, flee the den
of the ancient destroyer,
and coming, come into the palace of the King.

Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.

Commentary: Themes and Theology
by Nathaniel M. Campbell

Although this antiphon lacks a rubric in the manuscript, its placement right after the other three antiphons marked “For the dedication of a Church,” leads us to assume that it, too, is devoted to the Church. Its traditional imagery confirms this: the Church is the royal bride of God (cf. O virgo Ecclesia), “with neither spot nor blemish marred”—Hildegard’s version of Ephesians 5:27. But beyond the traditional imagery, there are two elements that give it its uniquely Hildegardian stamp: first, the antiphon implicitly identifies the order of virgins with the Virgin Church that it celebrates; and second, like O virgo Ecclesia and Nunc gaudeant, it situates that Church within the dramatic conflict of salvation history.

The figures of the Virgin Mary, the Virgin Church, and the virgin nuns of Hildegard’s monastery frequently coalesce under common images. In this antiphon, we thus find echoes of the “jewel resplendent” from the antiphon for the Virgin Mary, O splendidissima gemma; and the “high nobility” (alta persona) of the Church in this antiphon operates in the same register as the noble stock of the Virgin that opens the hymn, Ave generosa. Meanwhile, in the letter known as “The Proem to the Life of St. Disibod” (delivered to the monks of the Disibodenberg nearly two decades after Hildegard and her nuns had left the monastery to found the Rupertsberg), Hildegard sketched out an elaborate vision of salvation history interlinked with cosmology, where two heavenly bodies (planetae) whose positions heralded the birth of Christ represent the virgins and monks who would “adorn” the Church with their light. Building on her frequent identification of the angles with the stars, she continues:

But just as the star revealed [the Son of God] to devout people, who, in turn, illumined the whole world, so, too, virgins and monks once adorned the Church, and all people spoke of them as if they were angels, just as the prophet had exclaimed about them, “Who are these, that fly as clouds, and as doves to their windows?” [Isa 60.8]
—Letter 77r^[1]

Similarly, in a vision in The Book of Divine Works, Hildegard sees the “avenue” or path of virginity illuminated by “the brightly shining star” of Christ’s exemplary virginity, while additional rays of starlight beam all around:

These signify that within that protection above in the heavens, the paths of virginity are covered round about on all sides. For with an unconquered power, virginity, which began with the Son of God and was fortified by the Holy Spirit’s strength, also enjoys the guardianship of the angelic spirits; because virginity is a companion of the angels [socia angelorum], it merits their companionship in return.
—The Book of Divine Works 2.1.12^[2]

Thus the starlight of this antiphon both connects the Church with the angelic hosts above and highlights the particularly brilliant place of virgins within the Church’s identity.

Equally striking is the darkness of “the den of the ancient destroyer,” which the Virgin Church’s light puts to flight. At the broadest level, this is a reminder of the Church’s mission to escape the ancient enemy. As with the veiled references in O virgo Ecclesia, this too might be a warning against heretics—Hildegard’s vision of the Devil enchained in Scivias 2.7 concludes with a similar admonition, likely against Cathars: “And flee from those who linger in caves and are cloistered supporters of the Devil” (Scivias 2.7.22).^[3]

But more personally, the exhortation to flee from the Devil’s den and come instead “into the palace of the King” targets, again, the virgin nuns of her community. In The Book of the Rewards of Life (Liber vitae meritorum), Hildegard notes that, because “the innocent blood of Christ and his martyrs joined the promise of virginity to itself,” the devil hides shamefully in caves to hatch his plots against it (LVM 5.38[52]).^[4] And to complete the circle that connects virgin nuns with the Church and back to the Virgin Mary, we find that troubled soul, fighting against the Devil’s whirlwinds, declares, “And so I look to God Who gave me life, and I run to the Most Blessed Virgin who trod underfit the pride of the ancient cavern [antiquae speluncae], and thus I am made a strong stone of God’s edifice” (Scivias 1.4.7).^[5]

Transcription and Music Notes
by Beverly Lomer

Mode: A
Range: E below the final to E an octave and a fifth above
Setting: primarily syllabic with long melisma on the last word

In this antiphon, Hildegard alternates between the use of A, the modal final, and E as phrase demarcators. Several phrases as they have been transcribed here either end or begin with other pitches (G, B or F). There are potentially other interpretations of the phrasing in some of these cases.

The opening salutation, according to the melodic line, is probably intended to be O choruscans. It begins and ends on the final, and the next line opens with a leap from A to E, which appears on the next phrase on the O. Leaps are often found as phrase openers with Hildegard. To be clear, and because the piece is generally known by the longer title, I put parentheses around lux stellarum instead of changing it to be consistent with the generally accepted protocol in which the title is equal to the first line of the song. Performers can, of course, be free to interpret differently.

For example, o fulgens gemma tu es ornata in alta persona can be divided in different ways, depending on whether one is prioritizing melodic or verse/language structure. The linguistic sense might lend itself more to this:
O fulgens gemma
tu es ornata
in alta persona

Taking that approach, however, would mean that tu would begin a phrase on D, which is unusual and appears nowhere else in the piece. Often when she uses unusual tones to outline phrases, she does so more than once in the song, which serves as a clue to her intent.

In performing, it would make sense to sing lines 4 and 5 as one phrase.

Lines 6 and 7 on page 1 of the transcription might be considered one phrase, which would negate the use of F as a grammatical opening device on line 7.

Lines 6 and 7 might also be approached as one phrase from a musical perspective, though not perhaps from that of the text.

As far as the melisma on the last word, regis, is concerned, there is no musically logical place to break, so other options are possible than dividing it in half as I did here.

It is not our practice to add or suggest editorial ficta, and there is no version of this antiphon in the Dendermonde that could help with knowing when to add flats. A few clues exist, however. Repeated motives might be treated similarly, and tritones nullified by the addition of Bb in those instances where the scribe does not sign it.

Further Resources for O choruscans lux stellarum

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 254 and 317.
For a discography of this piece, see the comprehensive list by Pierre-F. Roberge: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography

Footnotes

^[1]The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, vol. 1, trans. Joseph L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman (Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 169. ↩
^[2] St. Hildegard of Bingen, The Book of Divine Works, trans. Nathaniel M. Campbell (Catholic University of America Press, 2018), p. 281. ↩
^[3] Hildegard of Bingen, The Book of the Rewards of Life, trans. Bruce W. Hozeski (Garland, 1994 / Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 243. ↩
^[4] Adapted from Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans. Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (Paulist Press, 1990), p. 301. ↩
^[5] Adapted from Scivias, trans. Hart and Bishop, p. 115; Latin text ed. Führkötter and Carlevaris, CCCM 43 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978), p. 71. ↩

by Nathaniel M. Campbell

“The Ruins of the Disibodenberg Monastery".
Lithograph, 1833. From Gemeinfrei IGL-Bildarchiv.

The Disibodenberg was the monastery where Hildegard began her religious life in 1112; became the leader of the women’s community in 1136; and composed her first work, Scivias (1141-1151). It had been founded by St. Disibod, a seventh-century Irish bishop who traveled to Germany and eventually founded the monastery on the hill overlooking the confluence of the Glan and Nahe rivers. It later fell into disrepair and had only been revivified from a house of canons to one of reform-minded monks just a few years before Hildegard took up residence there. Around 1170, Hildegard composed The Life of St. Disibod, Bishop (Vita sancti Dysibodi episcopi) at the request of Helengar, the abbot of Hildegard’s one-time abbey, the Disibodenberg, Drawing on her “mystic visions”—but likely also the material contained in the Disibodenberg’s Chronicle—Hildegard wrote eloquently about the exiled bishop turned monastic father and hermit. The themes she develops mirror her own views and experiences of the religious life and illuminate the pieces of liturgical music she had composed for St. Disibod in the 1150’s.

Born of wealthy stock in Ireland in the early seventh century, Disibod—as was common for such saints—lived an exemplary childhood before entering holy orders and receiving ordination as a priest at the age of thirty. Other sources indicate that Disibod lived 619-700, but Hildegard chose never to include specific dates in her hagiography of the bishop, perhaps to achieve the same ambiguous sense of atemporality that pervades her liturgical compositions for the saint. Upon his ordination, Hildegard writes:

He then did as would a good pigmentarius [spice, dye, or ointment maker], who plants pigment-bearing and aromatic plants in his garden, taking care always that his garden was green and not parched. (Vita S. Dysibodi episcopi, c. 5)

Though still just a priest at this point in his life, Hildegard’s description alludes to his future as a bishop, as pigmentarius was her peculiar visionary term for bishops in their roles as chrism-makers and anointers in the sacrament of confirmation (cf. Scivias 2.4). Moreover, we see already how central the metaphor of the spiritual life as a garden, green and verdant, will be in her version of his story.

Disibod seemed content to live a quiet, humble life in the pursuit of divine wisdom, but God had different plans for the budding saint. Despite the objections of those “whose life was blameworthy,” the local people elected him after their bishop died, and despite his own reluctance to leave the seclusion of his quiet, spiritual garden, he accepted the commission as “a teacher and bishop” (magister et antistes; c. 8). He labored “manfully and strongly” at this commission, and his holy teaching and proclamation of “the justice of God” inspired many in the local church, including a group of close-knit companions who gathered around the bishop to support him. Unfortunately, that support was not sufficient against the growing enmity of a laundry-list of enemies and heretics, especially those who found Disibod’s spiritual discipline too harsh for their taste.

Finally, aided by a multitude of unbelievers, they expelled the suffering man from his see with many insults. He preferred to serve God in quiet rather than waste any more time with no useful result. So he gathered a few religious men around him and for the sake of Christ’s name left behind the see of his honorable office, which he had ruled for ten years vigorously and devoutly, his country, and all that he had. (…) And so, with a happy mind and for the sake of eternal life, he undertook the pilgrimage that he had long desired. (Vita S. Dysibodi episcopi, c. 12)

His exile took him to Germany, where he found the way of life that would fulfill his humble yearnings:

But while he tarried in that province, deliberating about where he could turn next, he heard of the good and sweet reputation of St. Benedict’s form of religious life. Benedict had recently passed on to the Lord, and had left behind many people who loved his way of religious life. And so, Disibod recognized through the prompting of the Holy Spirit that he had not yet fulfilled a desire of his. For a long time he had wanted, in place of the people formerly committed to him, to join to himself some men of true and perfect form of religious life. For this is why he had gone again and again from place to place, and still neither in the places nor in the lifestyles of the inhabitants did he find what pleased his soul. (Vita S. Dysibodi episcopi, c. 13)

Hildegard here offers a subtle reminder of why she referred to Disibod in her liturgical compositions as still an exile—“the lifestyles of the inhabitants” of his own monastery were failing to “please his soul.” In the next excerpt, she then implicitly compares her own visionary charism—which included the divine revelation of the place of the Rupertsberg—to Disibod’s; as Hugh Feiss notes, “It is probably true that the vita of Disibod tells us more about Hildegard than about St. Disibod. (…) Hildegard uses the vita to admonish the monks of St. Disibod to return to their pristine fervor, and it reveals something of her understanding of what monastic life should be.” (Two Hagiographies, p. 32)

Because of the viridity of Disibod’s good desire, at this point God accepted his prayers. He sent into Disibod’s mind the sweet consolation of repose, just as dew falls upon the grass. In a night vision God also showed him by a certain manifestation that sometime he would find a place which matched what he prayed for. For to this blessed man, as to others of his beloved who desired God with all their longing on account of their great and good intention by which they strove for him faithfully with all their heart, God appeared as present in vision, speech, and hearing.
(…)
After crossing [the River Glan, near the Rhine], he saw a high, wooded peak. After ten years of pilgrimage he went up it. Exhausted, he sat down there and rested. Touched by the Holy Spirit, he said to his companions (…): “Here will be my rest.”

When he had traveled all around the mount and diligently examined all its slopes, its beauty satisfied his soul more and more as a place where he should dwell. Its height offered difficult access to those who came there, while the streams that flowed on both sides offered bodily refreshment to those staying there. (Vita S. Dysibodi episcopi, cc. 14, 16-7)

St. Disibod and Companions.
Engraving by Raphael Sadeler, 1594.
From Wikimedia Commons.

Disibod began to live the hermit’s life of fasting, vigils, and prayer upon the mountain’s slopes, while his three companions built shelters some distance away. As the reputation of his holiness spread, more and more people were attracted to the holy mountain—some to take up residence in the growing monastic community; others to seek healing, guidance, and miracles; while wealthy nobles began to endow the holy house with the lands surrounding the mountain. As the community grew to over fifty monks in twelve years, Disibod served as a committed and masterful teacher of the brothers under his care, fortifying them with the virtues of holiness and spiritual discipline in their fight against the Devil:

In this way this holy man began to unite and strengthen his sons. (…) The Holy Spirit, who had planted this community, also watered it, so that dew fell upon the fertile field, and those who lived in it under discipline ascended from virtue unto virtue. They met with no impediments from the ancient tempter, because wherever the Holy Spirit is with his miracles, there the ancient enemy will be terrified. He will not even dare to enter there. But if he stealthily sows something there, the Holy Spirit will again tread it down in consternation. Signs and miracles of God followed the merits and holiness of blessed Disibod, and these were often renewed without being wearying, because God always makes things new. (Vita S. Dysibodi episcopi, c. 25)

Though Disibod remained for the rest of his long life the Abbot Father of the community, he never joined the brothers in the oratory and other buildings that he built upon the summit. Rather, he remained throughout in a small oratory upon the eastern slope, living as the hermit whose life, like St. Anthony’s, is the root and summit of the monastic discipline described in the Rule of St. Benedict—thus informing another set of paradoxes that Hildegard invokes in her liturgical compositions, of spiritual loftiness rooted in earthly lowliness.

This servant of God lived among his own as a hermit, which way of life is the root of the life of monks, because men of this way of life withdraw from the world in all ways and live in solitude amid the praise of the angels. Their life is so laborious that many, because of their bodily or mental weakness, could not bear it, should they rashly and hastily undertake it. Living in this confining way of life, by teaching and example [doctrina et exemplo] the blessed father strengthened his subjects for every good work, like a man who makes a fire burn very hot. (Vita S. Dysibodi episcopi, c. 29)

St. Disibod
Oil on canvas, 17th c.
(From Colonial Art)

This portrait of Disibod’s fathership of his community reveals how deeply Hildegard was imbued with St. Benedict’s careful balance of holy strictness and caring, tender concern; and perhaps that Disibod had learned a bit from his rough experience as a bishop in Ireland:

He never received the habit of the monastic form of religious life, which his community used, because he allowed his subjects a way of life according to the Rule of blessed Benedict that was milder than his own. He did this for fear that if he were in a habit like theirs and did not want to lay aside the harsh rigor of his vigils, fasts, and other bodily renunciations, he would distract from their religious observance and detract from their common life. (…) From the time when he was driven from his see until the end of his life, he celebrated the divine rites of the altar not in the manner of bishops but according to the custom of poor priests. From this he had no mental unrest but happiness of heart, because he was imitating the suffering of Christ. (Vita S. Dysibodi episcopi, c. 30)

After more than thirty years of faithful service to this community, Disibod’s health began to fail. He appointed his successor as abbot, and gave instructions that he be buried, not in the monastery upon the hilltop, “but in the shaded arbor of his oratory [in humili umbraculo oratorii sui], in which he had served God as a solitary” (Vita S. Dysibodi episcopi, c. 34). Having faithfully kept the spiritual garden of his life like the pigmentarius (spice or dye maker) to which Hildegard compared him at the beginning, those spice trees and fragrant flowers came at last into full bloom:

After many labors and many troubles in the eighty-first year of his life, on the eight day of the Ides of July, he accepted the end of the present life. (…) His passing was immediately followed by a very sweet odor, like that of balsam, myrrh, and frankincense, and all other scents. (Vita S. Dysibodi episcopi, c. 35)

The remainder of the vita tells of the ups and downs of the Disibodenberg’s community in the centuries that followed—foreign invasions that led to abandonment; reestablishments later disendowed by greedy nobles; and several episodes of worldly monks whose vainglory got in the way. Hildegard connects the foundation’s history into that of the German church when she claims that St. Boniface, “Apostle of the Germans” and bishop of nearby Mainz, himself presided over the translation of Disibod’s relics in 754 from his humble oratory upon the mountain’s slope into the main oratory at its summit (c. 45). Though Hildegard kindly omits any mention of her own disputes with the “vainglory” of the current community—which, however, she did censure in the sermon she delivered to the community with the finished vita—the parallels with previous failures are clear enough. She chooses instead to close the saint’s life with an exhortation of hope, grounded in the eschatological perspective that she takes in the liturgical compositions:

So now let there be praise to God, who always fights against the ancient serpent in such a way that he removes every wrinkle of sin until the consummation of the world [cf. Eph. 5:27], when every disposition of his faithful will fully appear as he originally arranged it. Then the ancient serpent will be completely overthrown, since he will not be able to do anything for himself or to others, nor will he be able to give glory to anyone. (Vita S. Dysibodi episcopi, c. 54)

Sources

Summarized and adapted, with Latin text from Hildegard of Bingen, Two Hagiographies: Vita sancti Ruppert confessoris; Vita sancti Dysibodi episcope, ed. Christopher P. Evans, trans. Hugh Feiss (Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations, 11; Paris, Leuven, Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2010), pp. 86-157.
The older edition of the Latin text can be found in Patrologia Latina 197, cols. 1095-1116.

Psalm antiphon for St. Disibod [Feast, July 8; Translation, Sept. 8]Back to Table of Contents
(D 162r, R 470va) by Hildegard of Bingen

O mirum admirandum,
quod absconsa forma
precellit ardua
in honesta statura,
ubi vivens altitudo
profert mistica.
Unde, o Disibode,
surges in fine, succurrente
flore omnium
ramorum mundi,
ut primum surrexisti.

O wonder, so wondrous!
A hidden form,
so hard, so steep, surpasses
in its lofty honor—
where Living Height itself
reveals the mysteries.
And so, O Disibod,
you shall arise at the end of time
as first you rose—
the flow’r of all the branches of the world
comes to your aid.

Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.

Commentary: Themes and Theology
by Nathaniel M. Campbell

This is one of several pieces that Hildegard composed in honor of St. Disibod, the patron of the Disibodenberg, the monastery where she was first enclosed and grew up. She first provided this antiphon, together with the responsory, O viriditas digiti Dei, and the sequence, O presul vere civitatis, as part of a visionary letter in answer to a request in the early 1150’s from the Disibodenberg’s abbot, Kuno, for any information revealed to her concerning the patron.^[1] These three pieces appear in the earlier Dendermonde manuscript (fols. 162r-163r); they are joined by two other, rather more generic antiphons (perhaps to fill out the office), in the Riesencodex (fols. 470v-471r and 475v). Kuno’s letter (no. 74) may have been an attempt to patch things up between his community and the nascent Rupertsberg, to which Hildegard had recently relocated her growing community of nuns from the Disibodenberg. The move had been contentious—Kuno had initially refused Hildegard’s request for it, and even after he relented under the pressure of “the Living Light,” the two communities continued to argue bitterly for several years over the rights to the lands dowered to the Disibodenberg upon the entry of the women into the community before the move.

Though including the texts that would be used liturgically, Hildegard’s response (Letter 74r) was not, at first, warm:

O how foolish is the man who does not amend his own life, and yet delves into other people’s private affairs and, with a torrent of words like rushing waters, noises abroad all the vices that he finds hidden there. Let the man who does this hear the words of the Lord: “O man, once having tasted of good works, why are you deaf to their music, for they resound before God like a symphony? Why do you not examine your own heart and reject your unabashed lasciviousness? I am the One who brings the lost sheep back to the fold, the One to whom you should always turn, but you fail to do so, and thereby slap me in the face, rejecting my wounded hands and feet. And so you will answer to me concerning the house of your own heart and concerning the city I made and washed in the blood of the Lamb. Why are you not afraid to break the man that you did not create? You fail to anoint him and, therefore, neither cover nor protect him, but rather, you afflict him grievously with the heavy rod of correction. Now the period of your decline is at hand, but God, who created you, does not wish to lose you. Therefore, take these things to heart.”

These words of rebuke likely begin in censure of Kuno’s efforts to interfere with the financial administration of Hildegard’s community, but soon indicate that those “lascivious” efforts interfere in the spiritual life of the Disibodenberg, too. Hildegard showcases here her Benedictine spirituality, in that “the taste of good works” (gustus bonorum operum) are intuitively linked to the Opus Dei, the sung liturgies of the “Work of God,” enjoined by the Rule. The foolish, worldly concerns of Abbot Kuno have thus rendered those good deeds of liturgical service mute, and the consequences come in several Hildegardian images—ecclesiastical corruption “wounding” Christ anew, and alienation from the Heavenly City of Jerusalem that serves as the exemplar for the monastic community here on earth. Fundamentally, however, what Kuno and his brethren have done is to betray their patron and founder, blessed Disibod—their “heavy rod of correction” that has errantly fallen on Hildegard and her community turned back onto the bones at the most concrete center of the Disibodenberg’s community.

Her choice to respond to Kuno’s request for “any revelation of God” concerning Disibod with liturgical compositions, rather than the full-fledged hagiographical vita of the saint that she would compose two decades later (see here for more on her Life of St. Disibod), thus reflects the way in which the liturgical life of the community forms its heart. The symphony of God’s work connects the monastics who chant it with its source in the heavenly symphony that resounds ubi vivens altitudo profert mistica—“where Living Height itself reveals the mysteries.” This first antiphon in the three hagiographical pieces that follow Hildegard’s admonition sets the stage for the themes that will dominate, “the pervasive dichotomies of hiddenness, humility, and exile, and height, honor, and liturgical community.”^[2] These abstract pairs of ideas, however, are rooted in the concrete placement of the Disibodenberg high atop a mountain, and yet St. Disibod’s choice even after founding the community to remain but a lowly hermit clinging to the steep hillside.

The antiphon is situated both within and outside of time, as St. Disibod’s “form” governed the monastery, first while “hidden” within that hermitage, and now while “hidden” within the celestial glory of the heavenly city. Moreover, Hildegard plays on the concept of “rising up” (surges and surrexit) to mirror Disibod’s initial climbing of the mountaintop with his resurrection at the end of time. Thus, she intentionally seeks to connect the current community to their founder through this communion of sanctity, both looking back to its founding and forward to its eschatological consummation. Finally, crossing all of these temporalities at once, Hildegard uses the present participle succurente (“aiding”) to invoke the help of Christ, “the flow’r of all the branches of the world,” in the divine work of the Disibodenberg’s community.

Transcription and Music Notes
by Beverly Lomer

E mode
Range: G below the final to C above (Dendermonde Version); G below the final to E an octave above (Riesencodex Version)
Setting: primarily syllabic, some neumatic

Because there were extensive divergences in some lines between the sources, it was decided to create separate versions for Dendermonde and Riesencodex. The big differences begin on Line 7 of both transcriptions, though smaller ones are found earlier. Essentially, the R version is set in a higher range than that of D. One can speculate that the original (D) was too low for a particular singer.

There is one peculiar interval in the Riesencodex—line 6 of the transcription on the words profert mistica. There is an unusual leap of a sixth, from C (the last note of profert) to A (the first of mistica). This is rendered as a fifth in D (B to F), but a Bb must be added there to avoid a tritone. There is no signed flat in the source.

While most of the musical punctuation is fairly typical—use of the final and the fifth to outline phrases—there are some deviations. The first four lines of the transcriptions presented some vexing issues as far as alignment of the melodic phrasing and text. While word order in Latin is not so definitive as word order in English and other languages, Hildegard’s text phrases are generally congruent with musical ones. You will recall from other commentary on this site, that melody generally prevails, especially when standard text punctuation is consistently applied. In this case I chose to begin Line 2 of the transcription with D and kept it as the opening pitch of Line 4. It creates a somewhat awkward text phrasing. An alternative for those who prefer the final as phrase marker might be:

O mirum (E to E)
admirandum quod absconsa (E to E)
forma precellit ardua (E to E)

When the sources diverge, D remains more conventional, with the change to A as the punctuating pitch. In R, we see a more unusual use of C and G to open phrases, with G and B as closures respectively on those lines.

Further Resources for O mirum admirandum

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 180 and 290-91.
Leigh-Choate, Tova; Flunn, William T.; and Fassler, Margot E. “Hildegard as Musical Hagiographer: Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek MS. 103 and Her Songs for Saints Disibod and Ursula.” In A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen. Ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle et al. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), pp. 193-220.
For a discography of this piece, see the comprehensive list by Pierre-F. Roberge: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography

Footnotes

^[1] Kuno’s request is Letter 74, and Hildegard’s response Letter 74r, in Epistolarium I, ed. L. Van Acker, CCCM 91 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), pp. 160-2; The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, vol. 1, trans. Joseph L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 158-62. ↩
^[2] Tova Leigh-Choate, William T. Flynn, and Margot E. Fassler, “Hildegard as Musical Hagiographer: Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek MS. 103 and Her Songs for Saints Disibod and Ursula,” in A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle et al. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), pp. 193-220, esp. p. 202. ↩

Responsory for St. Disibod [Feast, July 8; Translation, Sept. 8]Back to Table of Contents
(D 162r-b, R 470v) by Hildegard of Bingen

R. O viriditas digiti Dei,
in qua Deus constituit plantationem
que in excelso resplendent ut statuta columna:

R. Tu gloriosa in preparatione Dei.

V. Et o altitudo montis
que numquam dissipaberis
in differentia Dei,
tu tamen stas a longe ut exul,
sed non est in potestate armati
qui te rapiat.

R. Tu gloriosa in preparatione Dei.

Gloria Patri
et Filio et Spiritui sancto.

R. Tu gloriosa in preparatione Dei.

R. O fresh viridity of God’s creative finger,
in which God planted his green vineyard
that glistens in the heights, a lofty pillar:

R. How glorious you are as you prepare for God!

V. And O, the mountain’s height!
O never shall you be laid low
when God marks the difference—
no, you stand yet afar, an exile,
but not ensnared by that brigand’s power
who snatches after you.

R. How glorious you are as you prepare for God!

Glory be to the Father
and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.

R. How glorious you are as you prepare for God!

Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.
Note: Newman’s edition follows a textual variant from Letter 74r to Abbot Kuno, which reads “discretione” instead of “differentia” in the versicle (Riesenkodex, fol. 347rb); we have followed the text as found in the musical settings of the responsory.

Commentary
by Nathaniel M. Campbell

This responsory was the second of the pieces that Hildegard “revealed” for the community of Disibodenberg, and it continues seamlessly the themes first established by the antiphon O mirum admirandum. St. Disibod’s presence “glistens” upon the monastery’s mountaintop, shimmering like sunlight filtered and dappled through the green leaves of its garden and vineyard—the plantatio, a classic metaphor for the monastic house that for Hildegard was also literal, given her experience keeping the monastery’s gardens. Yet the saint is also purposely kept separate from the monastery as “an exile” from the scandal that Hildegard chastises in the house. As one study of this responsory points out, its visionary text in Hildegard’s letter (no. 74r) to Kuno, the Disibodenberg’s abbot, is not formatted for liturgical use as a responsory; rather, the above arrangement comes from its later appearances in the two manuscripts that preserve its musical notation.^[1] However, as noted in the commentary to O mirum admirandum, Hildegard’s letter specifically situates the problems of the monastery within the failures of its liturgical service to God. It is likely that, when she dispatched the textual letter to the Disibodenberg, she had the messenger also commit the melodies she composed for the three pieces within it to memory, to be recited for and learned by the men’s community. That messenger may even have been her beloved secretary and confidant, Volmar, who remained his entire life a brother of the Disibodenberg, on permanent loan to Hildegard’s community at the Rupertsberg as provost and spiritual advisor.

While imagery of the garden and its viridity is classically Hildegardian, she provides a unique emphasis in this responsory through the musical setting of the refrain. As Tova Leigh-Choate, William Flynn, and Margot Fassler have recently argued:^[2]

It is the saint’s preparatory work that is celebrated in the repetendum: Tu gloriosa in preparatione Dei. Hildegard set the repetendum as a joyous melody with an extensive melisma of over 50 notes on the penultimate syllable “o” of preparatione. Three times as long as the chant’s opening melisma, the preparatione melisma emphasizes the chant’s highest note (g) through repetition of the note itself and the melisma’s entire opening arc (the rise to g and subsequent descent to G […]). This internal repetition not only highlights the word preparatione but also echoes the earlier word plantationem, whose penultimate syllable “o” descended in like manner from e to G, after peaking on g […]. As the repetendum would have been chanted at least twice, its repetitive preparatione melisma would have been the most memorable part of the performance. Hildegard clearly wanted to emphasize the preparatory work of St. Disibod.

Like every good confessor, Disibod would have prepared for the Lord’s coming with “loins girt and lamps burning” (Lk. 12:35-6). These verses from Luke may have opened the Gospel reading for Disibod’s feast at the Disibodenberg and Rupertsberg […]. But Hildegard’s line also brings to mind the preparatory themes in Isaiah 40:3 (“prepare ye the way of the Lord”) and in Ephesians 6:15 (“and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace”).^[3] Like the wilderness prophet and precursor of Christ, John the Baptist, and like the Christian who has “put on the armor of God,” Disibod strengthened himself and his followers to stand firm—like the mountaintop that will not be leveled—against the wiles of the devil. […]

The melodic parallels between the settings of plantationem and preparatione suggest that Hildegard viewed Disibod’s founding of a monastic community, represented by the image of the vineyard, as integral to his preparatory work.

By constructing the image of St. Disibod’s “lofty pillar” upon the City of God’s mountaintop as one that “cannot be laid low” by the divine forces that “prepare the way of the Lord” (Isaiah 40:3-4), Hildegard implicitly contrasts his eternal, spiritual stability with the problems at the earthly Disibodenberg that her letter takes to task. “At God’s discretion” (Hildegard wrote in discretione Dei in the letter to Abbot Kuno, which was later changed to in differentia Dei for the liturgical version of the text), she seems to suggest, that monastic house might very well topple to the ground if its brothers and abbot do not set their affairs in order and stop trying to interfere with the holy work of Hildegard’s new community at the Rupertsberg. Indeed, in her later years, Hildegard would often prophesy in dark and loathsome visions the radical disendowment of the Church in punishment for the sins of her ministers. Drawing on the Augustinian image of being pilgrims and exiles in this world that she used, for example, in Cum erubuerint, Hildegard implies here that the monks have ceased to be, like their founder and patron, “exiles” from the Earthly City and true citizens of the Heavenly City (an image to which she will return at the opening of the sequence for St. Disibod, O presul vere civitatis).

Transcription and Music Notes
by Beverly Lomer

B mode (plagal version of E mode)
Range: G above the final B to C below the final
Setting: primarily syllabic and neumatic with several longer melismas

The use of the plagal version of the E mode, with B as the final, is unusual for Hildegard. Punctuation in this work is primarily achieved by using the final and/or E. Readers will note that the transcription includes a number of lines that begin with D, either below or above the final. In those cases where the text indicates that the phrase beginning on D belongs to what went before (in the previous line of the transcription), I have added tick barlines to indicate the full idea. If the long section cannot be performed in one breath, it would be possible to breath at the end of the first line in those instances where a barline has been included.

There are minor differences between the sources, with one exception. Dendermonde does not include the Gloria patri.

Further Resources for O viriditas digiti Dei

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 182 and 291.
Leigh-Choate, Tova; Flunn, William T.; and Fassler, Margot E. “Hildegard as Musical Hagiographer: Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek MS. 103 and Her Songs for Saints Disibod and Ursula.” In A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen. Ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle et al. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), pp. 193-220.
For a discography of this piece, see the comprehensive list by Pierre-F. Roberge: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography

Footnotes

^[1] Tova Leigh-Choate, William T. Flynn, and Margot E. Fassler, “Hildegard as Musical Hagiographer: Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek MS. 103 and Her Songs for Saints Disibod and Ursula,” in A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle et al. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), pp. 193-220, esp. p. 203. ↩
^[2] Ibid., pp. 205-6. ↩
^[3] As Newman notes, the parallel with the famous verses in Isaiah that prefigure the Baptist is extended in the second versicle with the reference to the “hills made low” (Symphonia, ed. Newman, p. 291). ↩

Latest Images