Nathaniel M. Campbell

Union College, Barbourville, Kentucky, United States · School of Social Sciences and Humanities

Despite the lush visual imagery of the twenty-six visions that form the foundation of Hildegard of Bingen’s first work, Scivias, the physical person of the Virgin Mary appears only once, as the Queen of the heavenly symphony in the book’s final vision. The images that coalesce in the musical compositions dedicated to the Virgin in that final sympho...

This chapter explores the development and purpose of the illustrations in two manuscripts of Hildegard of Bingen’s works: one designed by Hildegard (the Rupertsberg Scivias), the other designed by a later generation of her monastery’s nuns (the Lucca Liber divinorum operum). An overview of her visionary experiences demonstrates the prophetic missio...

Pope Benedict XVI seemed an unlikely fellow to declare Hildegard of Bingen a Doctor of the Church in 2012. Yet Joseph Ratzinger’s studies as a medievalist disposed him to the symbolist tendencies of Hildegard and her contemporaries in reflecting on the relationship among scripture, history, and the Church. Deeply affected by the abuse of political...

Declared a Doctor of the Church in 2012, St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) is one of the most remarkable figures of medieval Latin Christianity. A visionary theologian and prophetic reformer, as well as a composer, artist, and natural scientist, her voice echoes across the centuries to offer today an integrated vision of the relationship between...

As with the first two works in her visionary trilogy, St. Hildegard of Bingen’s masterpiece, the Liber diuinorum operum (written 1165-1173/74), includes as a “Table of Contents” summaries for each of its 316 chapters, originally composed separately from the main text but later distributed throughout, either before each of its three parts or, in one...

In her massive compilatory encyclopedia, the Hortus Deliciarum, the twelfth-century abbess Herrad of Hohenbourg goes to great lengths to present her audience with a coherent and compelling account of salvation history and their personal role within it. She shares a particular interest with other twelfth-century thinkers in how her own time relates...

A significant point of contention within studies of the twelfth-century visionary saint and Doctor of the Church, Hildegard of Bingen, is the question of her role in the production of the illuminated Scivias manuscript known as the Rupertsberg Codex. While current German scholarship has tended to preclude Hildegard’s hand, pre-war German scholars,...

This paper seeks to explore the nature of evil in respect to the ethics of Epicurean philosophy presented in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura. Drawing on atomic physics and its complete corporeal physicality, Epicurean philosophy produces an ethical system in which the highest good is defined in terms of maximum pleasure both in the body and in the mind....