Hildegard’s journeys, undertaken with the object of stimulating
spiritual revival, were of the nature of religious progresses, but,
like those of her contemporary, Bernard of Clairvaux, they were in fact
largely directed against the heretical and most cruelly persecuted
Cathari, an Albigensian sect widely spread in the Rhine country of the
twelfth century, whom Hildegard regarded as ‘worse than the Jews’.[4]
In justice to her memory it is to be recalled that she herself was
ever against the shedding of blood, and had her less ferocious views
prevailed, some more substantial relic than the groans and tears of
this people had reached our time, while the annals of the Church had
been spared the defilement of an inexpiable stain.
[Illustration: Plate III. TITLE PAGE OF THE HEIDELBERG CODEX OF THE
_SCIVIAS_]
Hildegard’s correspondence with St. Bernard, then preaching his
crusade, with four popes, Eugenius III, Anastasius IV, Adrian IV, and
Alexander III, and with the emperors Conrad and Frederic Barbarossa,
brings her into the current of general European history, while she
comes into some slight contact with the story of our own country by her
hortatory letters to Henry II and to his consort Eleanor, the divorced
wife of Louis VII.[5]
To complete a sketch of her literary activities, mention should
perhaps be made of a secret script and language, the _lingua ignota_,
attributed to her. It is a transparent and to modern eyes a foolishly
empty device that hardly merits the dignity of the term ‘mystical’. It
has, however, exercised the ingenuity of several writers, and has been
honoured by analysis at the hands of Wilhelm Grimm.[6]
Ample material exists for a full biography of Hildegard, and a number
of accounts of her have appeared in the vulgar tongue. Nearly all are
marred by a lack of critical judgement that makes their perusal a
weary task, and indeed it would need considerable skill to interest a
detached reader in the minutiae of monastic disputes that undoubtedly
absorbed a considerable part of her activities. Perhaps the best life
of her is the earliest; it is certainly neither the least critical nor
the most credulous, and is by her contemporaries, the monks Godefrid
and Theodoric.[7]
The title of ‘saint’ is usually given to Hildegard, but she was not
in fact canonized. Attempts towards that end were made under Gregory
IX (1237), Innocent IV (1243), and John XXII (1317). Miraculous cures
and other works of wonder were claimed for her, but either they were
insufficiently miraculous or insufficiently attested.[8] Those who
have impartially traced her life in her documents will agree with the
verdict of the Church. Hers was a fiery, a prophetic, in many ways a
singularly noble spirit, but she was not a saint in any intelligible
sense of the word.