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Regent College Voice and Viriditas in Hildegard Of REGENT COLLEGE VOICE AND VIRIDITAS IN HILDEGARD OF BINGEN’S ORDO VIRTUTUM AN ESSAY PREPARED FOR THE RCSA ACADEMIC SYMPOSIUM 2020 BY AMY LEMKE VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA 6 MARCH 2020 Ordo Virtutum is the earliest known morality play in Western music history and it was written in 1151 by Hildegard of Bingen for the discipleship of her community of nuns at Disibodenberg. Hildegard was a vibrant thinker and visionary who sought to integrate every facet of monastic life – music, nature, spirituality, community, etc. – in one well-tuned composition that could become a microcosm of the entire cosmos.1 Thus, communal singing was more than a rational learning experience and more than personal expression of praise and thanks to God; it was the sacramental means of participating in the divine and human nature of Christ and the way of converting the rebellious soul to the Christian life.2 Twelfth-century Christianity in the West is marked by the structuring efforts of scholasticism and the struggle for church reform, but Hildegard is a unique figure who was able to balance the mystery of her spiritual experience with the structural impulse of her time. She did so through her unique concept of viriditas which encompasses the greenness of natural life, holistic physical and spiritual health, and the vitality of God present in the world through the Incarnation of Christ. While theologians of her time went about their “project of systematizing and ordering,” Hildegard’s Ordo Virtutum serves as a theological encapsulation that could be embodied by her community. 3 Hildegard of Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum displays a relationship between voice and her concept of viriditas that will be addressed in three sections related to the morality play’s historical context, its musical features, and its theological implications. 1 Heinrich Schipperges, The World of Hildegard of Bingen: Her Life, Times, and Visions, trans. John Cumming (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1998), 63. 2 Margot Fassler, “Composer and Dramatist: ‘Melodious Singing and the Freshness of Remorse,” in Voice of Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and Her World, ed. Barbara Newman (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 156. 3 Brian FitzGerald, Inspiration and Authority in the Middle Ages: Prophets and their Critics from Scholasticism to Humanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 86. 1 Hildegard’s work centers on the theme of viriditas because she experienced a marked lack of physical, ecclesial, and societal health in her particular context. She grew up under Jutta, a highly ascetic anchoress who lived “in silent anticipation of her own death” and whom Hildegard would eventually succeed.4 Hildegard never acknowledges Jutta’s influence and seems to depart from her predecessor’s negativity, instead embracing the pain of her headaches as an opportunity and avenue to God while living.5 Her headaches became a source of her authority in critiquing the new scholastics who were studying “more for fame than for piety.”6 She wrote to popes to reform their spending in the context of the Investiture controversy and to kings to call for defense of the poor and the separation of church and state.7 Hers was a positive, holistic vision for society motivated by hope that Christ was bringing renewal to the church, his body. Hildegard’s thought was influenced by her contemporary and supporter, Bernard of Clairvaux, who celebrated God’s affirmation (and presence in) every aspect of human life through the incarnate Christ.8 Both theologians looked to the prophecy of the tree of Jesse found in Isaiah 11:1 which pointed to Christ as the flower blooming on the genealogical tree that extended to the present day and held the Medieval believers in its branches as grafted shoots.9 The tree of Jesse was a common trope in the Medieval church and, for Hildegard, viriditas was the sap of God sustaining the tree which was the community of believers across the centuries. As much as Hildegard’s world was starved for the ‘viridity’ of God, she sought to tend the branches 4 Constant Mews. “Religious Thinker: ‘A Frail Human Being’ on Fiery Life,” in Voice of Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and Her World, ed. by Barbara Newman, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 54. 5 Mews, “Religious Thinker”, 68. 6 FitzGerald, 84. 7 Schipperges, 16-17. 8 M. Kilian Hufgard, Bernard of Clairvaux’s Broad Impact on Medieval Culture, (Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2001), 55. 9 Hufgard, 58. 2 entrusted to her and trust that her own pain might be part of God’s pruning process. Ordo Virtutum is the creative expression of viriditas because it was meant as a discipleship exercise for the nuns’ growth in Christian health but it was also the application of Hildegard’s prophetic voice in her historical context. In highlighting the opening and closing processionals of the play and the song “Flos campi,” the climactic high point of the play, we can grasp how singing served as Hildegard’s means to viriditas. Ordo Virtutum begins with the procession of the group of Virtues, who then listen to the profession of the Patriarchs and Prophets: “We are the roots and you the branches, the fruit of the living bud...”10 Thus, Hildegard’s community is “called to dwell” in the upper branches of the Jesse tree where they find communion with the lineage of Christ.11 Hildegard utilizes melismas, a common feature of sacred chant which adds multiple notes to one syllable of a word (see Appendix, fig. A), to encourage participants to meditate on every word as they are drawn out over a longer period of time. Here the words ‘we’ and ‘bud’ are drawn out to emphasize the holy communion of the church existing across time, but centered in Christ. The play continues with the entrance of the Soul who laments her struggle against the Devil’s temptations and pleads for the aid of the Virtues. The role of the Devil was played by Hildegard’s male secretary Volmar and, as the only figure who does not sing, is relegated to guttural shouting as he tempts the Soul with possessions only to be refuted by Humility, the queen of the Virtues. Singing was thought to blur boundaries between the nuns and the members of the Church across time and space – those branches who make up Christ’s body join to all become mysteriously present in their midst. 10 Hildegard of Bingen, Ordo Virtutum, ed. Audrey Ekdahl Davidson (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), 2. 11 Fassler, 169. 3 The highpoint of the play is “Flos campi” where the Virtues sing: “The flower of the field yields to the wind, the rain sprinkles it. O Virginity, you abide in the harmonies of the celestial cities: wherefore you are a sweet flower which will never dry up” (Appendix, fig. B).12 This is the most melismatic section of the entire piece with “lavish and florid” ornamentation that emulates the nuns’ ability to bloom as the flowers of the tree through the preservation of their virginity.13 “Flos campi” is at the heart of the play to affirm the centrality of virginity to viriditas which abides in the “harmonies” of the city of God. 14 However, the Soul does not listen and she eventually gives in to her temptation. She returns battered and bruised, but is received by the Virtues who prepare to defend her and contend with the Devil’s pointed charge that lack of sexual knowledge belies a lack of self-knowledge (Appendix, fig. C).15 Their rebuttal against the Devil involves a stage direction to throw flowers at him (a non-musical example of viriditas), then they bind him in chains and Chastity rebukes him as the Virgin Mary who brought forth the Son of God without sexual knowledge or experience.16 The experience of performing this piece would have bound the women together in a strong sense of community while enacting the reality of the spiritual struggle and upholding virginity as key to viriditas. There are no boundaries between these ideas; they flow into each other and overlap like the Holy Spirit speaking through Hildegard or the Virgin Mary speaking through Chastity. Ordo Virtutum ends with a final procession of Virtues, Soul, Patriarchs and Prophets who together sing: “In the beginning all creatures grew and flourished, in the middle time flowers bloomed; afterwards the bloom of the green grew brown” – indicating the loss of viriditas in the 12 Hildegard of Bingen, Ordo Virtutum, 15. 13 Audrey Ekdahl Davidson, “Music and Performance: Hildegard of Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum,” in The Ordo Virtutum of Hildegard of Bingen: Critical Studies, ed. Audrey Ekdahl Davidson, (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), 14. 14 Hildegard of Bingen, Ordo Virtutum, 15. 15 Davidson, 12-13. 16 Fassler, 171. 4 primordial Fall, but also in the ecclesial institution of Hildegard’s time. The voices continue and mysteriously unite as the first-person voice of Jesus Christ, the weary and battered tree (who remains unnamed in the score): “... your eye should never yield, until you might see my body full of buds... For it wearies me, so that all my members become a mockery.”17 The conclusion is an amazing example of Hildegard’s use of music as a “sonic icon” where the divine voice is channelled by the community who has now been welcomed fully into the tree of Jesse, the lineage and body of Christ.18 This foray into the music of Ordo Virtutum highlights that, for Hildegard, the relationship between voice and viriditas afforded educational possibilities, demonic defense, unification of the community, and divine access. We now turn to the theological implications of Ordo Virtutum in the twelfth century and the historical shifts that this piece foreshadows.
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