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Divine Love in the Medieval Cosmos Te Cosmologies of Hildegard of Bingen and Hermann of Carintiha

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Divine Love in the Medieval Cosmos Te Cosmologies of Hildegard of Bingen and Hermann of Carintiha Divine Love in the Medieval Cosmos Te Cosmologies of Hildegard of Bingen and Hermann of Carintiha By Jack Ford, University College London Love In every constitution of things Gives herself to all things the most cohesive bond is the Most excellent in the depths, construction of love… the one And above the stars bond of society holding every- Cherishing all… thing in an indissoluble knot. (Hildegard of Bingen, Antiphon for Divine Love)1 (Hermann of Carinthia, De Essentiis)2 Introduction12 things is achieved by love which rules the earth and the seas, and commands the heavens,” exclaims Lady Philosophy, in Troughout the Middle Ages love possessed an exalted the Roman statesman Boethius’ (c.476-526) Consolations status in regard to the cosmos. In a tradition stretching of Philosophy.3 Writing at the end of a great Neoplatonic back to Plato and culminating in Dante’s Divine Comedy, tradition, Boethius was naturally heavily infuenced love was synonymous with an expression of divine power. by Platonic cosmology. It is indeed from Plato’s own In numerous cosmological works, love was believed to cosmological myth, the Timaeus, where we fnd the initial constitute the glue and structure of the universe, and idea of the World-Soul: the soul of the world that Timaeus was employed among the Christian Neoplatonists of the tells Socrates “is interfused everywhere from the center twelfth century as a virtual synonym for the Platonic to the circumference of heaven,” and the same World- World-Soul (anima mundi), the force which emanated Soul which Hildegard and Hermann identify with God’s from the Godhead and fused the macrocosm (the planets, force and power that sustains the cosmos with his love for fxed stars of the frmament, and Empyrean heaven) to creation.4 the microcosm (the terrestrial earth and man) in cosmic Perhaps the greatest fgure to make love synonymous harmony. Unsurprisingly then, in the cosmologies of the with the cosmos was Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). In twelfth century philosophers Hildegard of Bingen (1098- his early work, the Vita nuova (“Te New Life”), Dante’s 1179) and Hermann of Carinthia (1100-1160), “divine courtly love for his childhood sweetheart Beatrice is love” plays a central role, functioning as the binding force portrayed in a cosmological setting. Te goddess Love of the universe. comes to Dante and says: “Anyone of subtle discernment Yet what exactly is meant by the term “love”? would call Beatrice love because she so greatly resembles and how can its “divine” variant be situated within the me.”5 He ends the work with the hope that his soul context of the Middle Ages? Whilst the Latin term caritas, in future will join Beatrice in the innermost sphere of defned as “love” or “charity,” on its own is ambiguous heaven, ‘who in glory contemplates the countenance of and problematic, a useful point-of-entry to answer these the One who is blessed for ever.’6 In the Divine Comedy questions is to examine contemporary works in which too, love, like God, is omnipresent in the structure of love is explored from a cosmological viewpoint. Te origins of late medieval cosmological interpretations of the relationship between the microcosm and macrocosm arguably lie in late-antiquity. “All this harmonious order of 3 Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, Te Consolation of Philosophy, ed. Douglas C. Langston (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2010), 32. 4 Plato, Te Dialogues of Plato, trans. Benjamin Jowlett (New 1 Fiona Bowie and Oliver Davis, ed., Hildegard of Bingen: An York: Charles Scribner Sons, 1892), 530. Anthology, trans. Robert Carver (London: SPCK Publishing, 5 Dante Alighieri, Vita nuova, XXIV, 5. Accessed 20 April 2017 1990), 119. via the Princeton Dante Project: http://etcweb.princeton.edu/ 2 Hermann of Carinthia, De Essentiis, trans. Charles Burnett dante/pdp/vnuova.html. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982), 129. 6 Ibid, XLII, 3. 17 Dante’s cosmology.7 Dante, passing through the sphere of use to temporarily win back Eurydice from Hades using his Venus discovers that even God’s divine mercy and love has lyre: allocated a place in heaven for the biblical prostitute Rahab (seen in Joshua 2 and 6). By showing faith in God through He hard a hevinly melody and sound, her actions in aiding the Israelites, Rahab is allowed to Passing all instruments musicall, ‘grow bright with peace’ in the depths on earth, and as a Causit be rollyn of the spheris round; reward for forsaking bodily love for love of the divine, she is Quhilk armony, of all this mappamound, given the privilege of being ‘lifted up before all other souls’ Quhilk moving seiss, unyt perpetuall – to paradise.8 Quihilk of this warld Plato the saul can call… A later example, the poem Orpheus and Eurydice, Tare leirit he tonis proportionat.10 written by the Scottish author Robert Henryson (c.1420 - c.1505) serves as another useful point of comparison from Whilst this passage clearly alludes to the cosmological which to approach Hildegardian and Carinthian cosmology. doctrine of the Harmony of Spheres (which will be explored In this adaptation of the traditional Greek myth, Orpheus in depth later in Hildegard and Hermann’s works) what is in an endeavour to rescue Eurydice, embarks on a virtual signifcant is the direct reference to musical relationships tour of the cosmos, starting from the upper sphere of the constructing the Platonic World-Soul. It is musical Empyrean heaven moving through the traditional order of proportions and ratios inherent in the World-Soul that the planets: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, the Sun cause ‘the rollyn of spheris round’ and ‘armony’ of universe. and the Moon. It is notable that this cosmological journey Signifcantly, love in this poem is given cosmological is the opposite of Dante’s. Orpheus begins ‘close to God (in signifcance as Henyrson proceeds to juxtapose Orpheus harmony, celestially and otherwise), but moves toward the and his wife Eurydice: Orpheus, in being able to hear the centre, and then beyond it, to hell to reunite with his love.’9 music of the spheres, allegorically embodies the qualities It is during his passage through the planetary spheres that of the divine intellect and the heavenly creator (‘the pairte Orpheus learns how to play the celestial music that he will intellecyfe’), whereas Eurydice, located in the Underworld, is associated with the desire, corruption and earthly appetite of humankind (‘Our afectioun,/ Be fantasy oft movit up 7 See Dante Alighieri, Te Divine Comedy, trans. Robin and doun’).11 Tis misogynistic portrayal of love is not an Kirpatrick (London: Penguin, 2012). Te cosmology of the Divine Comedy is structured on God’s love. Beatrice reveals to isolated case in Henryson’s works, for in Te Testament of Dante the pilgrim that heaven can be identifed by ‘an ordered Cresseid, after a celestial tribunal of the planets, Saturn and ratio,’ and it is ‘this – such form – that makes the universe the Moon mete out the sentence of leprosy to Cresseid for resemble God’ (Paradiso, Canto 1, Lines 103-5). As opposed insulting them, and ultimately for being a bad lover by to order of heaven, Hell is a place characterised by corruption forsaking her romantic love of Troilus for Diomede.12 In and shrouded in a darkness through which Dante cannot both cosmological poems, Henryson shows the impact of ‘discern a single thing,’ (Inferno, Canto 4, Line 12). Te last circle, home to a three-headed Satan, represents the fullest the heavenly macrocosm on the fate of man; Henryson is corruption of the divine trinity; punished for his rebellion and explicit that it is Orpheus’ knowledge of the mathematical rejection of God through the loss of his angelic nature, his six ratios inherent in the music of the spheres that enables bat-like wings create frigid winds that freeze all movement in him to win back Eurydice, and in a similar vein it is ice (Inferno, Canto 34, Line 49-50). Te stillness, silence and Cresseid’s forsaking of the heavens that results in the divine darkness a clear contrast from the circular motion, music and light which characterises the perfection of divinity. In the fnal punishment of leprosy being subjected upon her. canto of the poem Dante’s desire to be reunited with God in Tese above works provide helpful examples of love is realised as his will is linked with God just ‘as wheels that the Neoplatonic trend to equate love with God in a move equilibrium,/ by love that moves the sun and other stars.’ cosmological sense—a trend that Hildegard, Hermann and (Paradiso, Canto 33, Lines 143-145). Lino Pertile in particular others would engage and develop. Outside this frst type has argued the Paradiso should be viewed as a ‘drama of desire,’ of divine love, Hildegard and Hermann necessarily reacted the longing of Dante the pilgrim to be reunited with the love of God. See Lino Pertile ‘“Paradiso”: A Drama of Desire,’ Word and Drama in Dante (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993), 145. 10 Robert Henryson, “Orpheus and Eurydice,” in Te Poems of 8 Dante, Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto 9, Lines 115-20, 362. Robert Henryson, ed. Robert L. Kindrick (Michigan: Western 9 Jennifer N. Brown, “Cosmology, Sexuality, and Music in Michigan University, 1997). See lines 220-226. Robert Henryson’s Orpheus and Eurydice,” in Sexuality, 11 Ibid. See lines 428-33. Sociality, and Cosmology In Medieval Literary Texts, ed. 12 Robert Henryson, “Te Testament of Cresseid,” in Te Poems Jennifer N. Brown and Maria Segol (Basingstoke: Palgrave of Robert Henryson, ed. Robert L. Kindrick. (Michigan: Macmillan, 2013), 152. Western Michigan University, 1997). See lines 309-344.
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