‘Enarrabiliter’: The Separation of Visionary Experience and Communicable Form in Hildegard of Bingen’s Vision Books

Abstract

Although Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) is generally and popularly thought of as a mystic, there is a consensus among scholars of mysticism that she is better left out of accounts of mystical literature. One criterion is her lack of engagement with and influence on the development of mysticism. Kurt Ruh, for instance, asserts: ‘Hildegard steht … weder in einer mystischen Tradition, noch hat sie eine solche bewirkt’. 1 Ruh is not being overly exclusive here. On the contrary, he is willing to discuss a great number of texts that are not ‘Mystik’, but rather ‘mystisch’, because they are part of whole chains and networks of texts gathered around ‘properly’ mystical texts. These can be either didactically oriented texts, which use the linguistic and stylistic characteristics of mystical texts, or texts critical of mysticism, which influence the historical development of mysticism through their criticism. 2 Hildegard, however, is situated by Ruh outside of this broad network of mystical texts.