That in the man made in His image and likeness, every creature signified God, and after the fall only out of merciful love through His incarnation repaired him with regard to the beatitude, which the fallen angel had destroyed, He put in order, and thus this mystical decree is manifested from the meaning of the vision.
“In humanity, made in his image and likeness, God signified all creation, and after the fall, which he restored out of that singular love of goodness through his own Incarnation, he placed humanity in the blessedness that the fallen angel had lost. This is what is meant by the mystical signification / meaning of the aforewritten vision.”**
Quod in homine ad imaginem et similitudinem suam facto, omnem creaturam Deus signavit, et eum post lapsum ex sola benignitatis charitate per incarnationem suam reparatum in beatitudine, quam prolapsus augelus perdiderat, collocaverit, et quia hoc mystica praescriptae visionis significatione monstretur. *
(*This text only appears only in the Patrologia Latina, it is missing from the Riesencodex and the critical edition CCCM92,
(**Nathaniel's Translation)
Commentary:
Since it is unlikely that this text would belong to St. Hildegard, I have only included it here for the sake of completeness. Here we find introduced, as almost an afterthought, the role of the incarnation in man's redemption and the return to order of all of creation. It is as though the image and likeness of God, present in man, signified by every creature, is broken by the fall. When man falls, every creature loses its reference to God. By His incarnation, God not only restores man, but, in man, all of creation.
What are your thoughts?
This text (like the sentence, Mirificæ visionis, de qua sequens opus pendet... that appears in the PL at the opening of LDO I.1) is from the Capitula, that is, the "Table of Contents" that appears on two quires at the opening of the Ghent manuscript of the work (for a description of all of this, see the Introduction to CCCM 92, pp. 86ff). Because CCCM 92 used the Ghent manuscript as the primary text, it printed the Capitula separately before the text. The version in the PL was edited from the Lucca manuscript, where the chapter headings are incorporated into the text.
ReplyDeleteThere are 2 issues here:
(1) Why is the Ghent manuscript now considered primary? As Derolez discusses in the Introduction to the CCCM edition, modern research has shown definitively that the Ghent manuscript was the first parchment copy made from the wax tablets on which Hilegard's initial dictation was taken down. It is full to overflowing with corrections in several different hands, as the text was "polished" after the initial draft. Thus, it represents the earliest version of the text, written and executed under Hildegard's supervision. The Riesenkodex was not produced until the decade after Hildegard's death, probably as part of the preparations for the canonization proceedings that fizzled out; and the Lucca manuscript (the only one of the LDO to contain large illustrations) was not executed until the early 13th century.
(2) Who wrote the chapter headings (Capitula)? First, the two quires that form the Capitula in the Ghent manuscript were copied separately, though by the same hand as one of the scribes in the Rupertsberg scriptorium; and only later was it inserted at the beginning of the manuscript (as can be seen from the fact that the first page of actual text, which now follows the Capitula insert, is dirtied, indicating that it spent a certain amount of time as the first page in the book). This makes sense if the Ghent manuscript was, in a way, a work in progress -- the Table of Contents could not be constructed until after the entire work was assembled. Furthermore, the chapter titles are in a way synthetic, indicating a grasp of the whole work by their author, rather than simply a paragraph-by-paragraph summary. In addition, some of the chapter titles (esp. for I.i.5-13) are out of sync with the actual text in the Ghent manuscript, but instead reflect the textual division found in the Lucca manuscript (and thus in the PL edition). As you get to those chapters, you will see the discrepancies between the PL and CCCM 92.
Finally, many of the Capitula use terms and phrases that are out of joint, as it were, with Hildegard's style, often offering a more conventional interpretation than Hildegard's. For example, they often introduce the conventional exegetical categories of littera, allegoria, and moralitas, terms that Hildegard does not normally use in her own exegesis, especially in the Genesis commentary that forms Part II. Furthermore, they often uses descriptions of Hildegard's thought that are out-of-step with her standard humility topoi, e.g. subtilis descriptio and cum eleganti expositione.
What does all of this mean? The preponderance of evidence indicates that Hildegard probably did not author the chapter headings, but that they were composed by one of her close associates (likely one the men who served as her amanuenses / provosts).
But even if the capitula were not written by Hildegard herself, they are nevertheless a witness to an early and intimate attempt at understanding and summarizing the work -- which means they can be useful for us, too. So how to parse this particularly dense chapter title?
ReplyDeleteQuod, as in other cases of this type, is a rather untranslatable signifier of summary, as it were: “This section deals with hoc” (and often hoc will be turned to Quod at the beginning of a sentence like this) -- quia in the last phrase also performs the same function, i.e. “that this is so…”. Thus, we get:
“In humanity, made in his image and likeness, God signified all creation, and after the fall, which he restored out of that singular love of goodness through his own Incarnation, he placed humanity in the blessedness that the fallen angel had lost. This is what is meant by the mystical signification / meaning of the aforewritten vision.”
Thank you so much for your invaluable insight Nathaniel. I'm going to include your translation in the body of the post, as well as link to your thorough explanation of the discrepancies between manuscripts and printed editions.
ReplyDelete