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2015

Queer Mysticism in the High Middle Ages: Pain,Love, Earth, and the Female Body in theIllustrations of Hildegard of Bingen’s SciviasBecky BushnellVirginia Commonwealth University, bushnellrj@vcu.edu

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Queer Mysticism in the High Middle Ages: Pain, Love, Earth, and the Female Body in the Illustrations of

Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias

BACKGROUND Hildegard of Bingen was a Benedictine nun (and, later, magistrate) in the convent of Disibodenberg in Germany. Hildegard experienced divine visions throughout her life, which she reccorded and illustrated in Scivias (“Scito vias Domini” or “Know the Ways of the Lord”).

MAIN CLAIMWhile the bulk of discourse on Hildegard’s work assumes a heterosexual framework, Hildegard’s feminine divine of-ten has queer undertones due to the distortion of gender norms implied through 1. Hildegard’s romantic and/or sexual representations of maternal Christ and 2. her conflation of pain with love and with the female body through maternal and/or erotic metaphor.

DISCUSSIONNature and Physicality in Maternal and Erotic Images of ChristHildegard, among other medieval theologists, ascribed feminine characteristics to Christ by linking Christ with the feminine Sapienta (or Caritas), the Virtue of Wisdom. Hildegard also feminized the divine by emphasizing Christ’s physicality and Christ’s connection to Creation and the Earth.

Violent Love: Scivias in Relation to Courtly Love and 13th Century Mystical TextsMuch of high medieval female mystics’ writing falls out-side the conventions of courtly love due to the conflation of love with violence. Many 13th century female mystics have described romantic, sensual or erotic encounters with Christ which frequently involve intense psychological and physiological pain.

Vulnus as Vulva, Wound as Womb: The Meta-phorical Female BodyIn the analysis of medieval female mystical work in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, some scholars have claimed representations of the wound in Christ’s side serve as metaphors for the female body, particularly female repro-ductive organs. The wound is sometimes argued to be an erotic representation of a vulva, and other times an asexual maternal womb. Each of these metaphors ultimately con-flate pain not only with love, but with the female body.

CONCLUSIONThe illustrations in Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias im-ply a contestation of tradition not only through ele-ments like the femininization of God, the equivalency between pain and love, and the metaphorical female body, but through the queer undertones and implica-tions that such elements create. Although little has been written examining the implications of these and other elements in medieval mystical texts, such ex-amination may further our understanding of female mystical sexuality in the high Middle Ages.

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Becky Bushnell, Virginia Commonwealth University