medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Wednesday, September 17, 2008, at 11:28 am, christopher crockett wrote:
> From: John Dillon <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > 4) Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179).
>
> > Two views of an illumination of H. with prior Volmar (_Liber Scivias_;
> Hessische Landesbibliothek, Wiesbaden, Hs. 2 [the so-called
> Riesencodex], c.
> 1180):
> > http://www.oglethorpe.edu/faculty/~j_bohart/images/hildegaard.JPG
> > http://www.harpers.org/media/image/blogs/misc/hildegard.jpg
>
>
> my understanding (from the introduction to the beautiful Corpus Christianorum
> edition, but read many, many years ago) is that the original ms. of the
> Scivias was destroyed in the Second Acute Collective Psychotic Episode
> and
> what we have left is actually a copy --albeit a quite amazingly
> accurate one--
> made by nuns of her abbey in the 1920s or so.
>
> seems like i remember seeing, in the CC ed., a B&W plate of the original,
> which appeared to be virtually identical to the color plate which that
> edition
> published (i think that all of the illuminations were reproduced in
> that two
> volume edition).
Hildegard's own illuminated _Scivias_ did disappear as you say. In the page linked to here the Hessische Landesbibliothek Wiesbaden implies but does not assert that it was plundered by Russian troops:
http://www.hlb-wiesbaden.de/index.php?dom=1&lang=22&p=63
But the illumination shown is from the so-called Riesencodex ('Giant Book') of H.'s work, a collected edition (incl. the _Scivias_) that was produced by her community at the Rupertsberg and completed fairly soon after her death (opinions differ on when it was begun and when it was completed). This was also sent to Dresden and did return. A facsimile of its musical portion, edited by Lorenz Welker (NOT Lawrence Welk!), was published at Wiesbaden by Ludwig Reichert in 1998.
Best again,
John Dillon
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