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Corpus Mysticum et Representationem: Hildegard of Bingen's Scivias and Ordo Virtutum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Michal Kobialka
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Extract

Ever since the project of supplying objective knowledge was challenged by the debates about colonialism, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity, academics from different fields have begun to share a conception of knowledge as representational, differing primarily in the accounts of how their, “representations” are related to objects that are represented. Understandably, Plato's and Aristotle's definitions of mimesis have acquired new currency. According to Plato, whenever “you see one, you conceive of the other.” According to Aristotle, the relationship between techne and phusis is contained in the formulation that, on the one hand, art imitates nature; on the other hand, art carries to its end what nature is incapable of effecting. Both Plato and Aristotle perceive mimesis as the process of either epistemological or ontological repetition or doubling in which “one” (thought or subject) becomes “two” (thought or subject doubles as idea or object), in theatre studies, for example, the prevailing tradition defines representation in terms of a promise of a performative act. Such an act signifies that the “I” or “we” making the promise understands or knows the problem, the object, or the text and will be able to transfer it from nature, that is, from the real space, to the theatrical, “imaginary” space where the declaration of its existence and the formulation of its speech will be staged in a tight spotlight. This process is authorized by an institutional structure that safeguards the promise, its execution, and its use.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , May 1996 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1996

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References

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7. The term “remanence,” taken from physics, has recently acquired a linguistic proficiency. It signifies energy (light) that lingers for a split second after, let us say, the lamp is turned off. The term should not be equated with terms such as, for example, “aura” or “ghosting,” because these are connected with the person perceiving an aura or ghosting. See Foucault, Michel, “Politics and the Study of Discourse,” in The Foucault Effect, eds. Burchell, Graham, Gordon, Colin, and Miller, Peter (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), 55Google Scholar . In this essay, Foucault uses the term to describe the concept of the episteme of a period: “the episteme is not a slice of history common to all the science: it is a simultaneous play of specific remanences.”

8. I will argue that this tension was substantially modified by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, which determined a precise definition, materiality, and location of the body of Christ in theological discourse on the Eucharist. Specifically I am referring here to the dogma of transubstantiation enunciated at the Fourth Lateran Council. The doctrine emphasized the real, substantial presence of Christ in the bread and wine of the sacrament, even apart from the activities of the Mass. The famous Chapter 21, which states that every Christian who has attained the age of reason must receive the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist at least once a year, retains its binding force to this day. See, for example, Jedin, Hubert, Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church (New York: Herder and Herder, 1960),78–79Google Scholar; The Councils of the Church, ed. Margull, Hans Jochen (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1966), 141–145Google Scholar . I am currently working on a project that will deal with the issues concerning representational practices in the post-Christian Europe (1215).

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11. For detailed discussion of the terms: “conditions of existence” see Lyotard, Jean-François, The Postmodern Explained: Correspondence, 1982–1985, translation edited by Pefanis, Julian and Thomas, Morgan (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), Chapters 1, 7Google Scholar ; “a field of specifiable relations” see Michel Foucault, “Politics and the Study of Discourse,” in The Foucault Effect, 55; “a dynamic field of potentialities and struggle” see Bourdieu, Pierre and Wacquant's, Loic J. D.An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 101–104Google Scholar ; “practices that can be situated but not classified” see de Certeau's, Michel “Mysticism,” in Diacritics 22:2 (Summer 1992): 11–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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13. See, for example, Bossy, J., “The Mass as a Social Institution,” in Past and Present 100 (1983): 29–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; James, M., “Ritual, Drama, and Social Body in the Late Medieval Town,” in Past and Present 98 (1983): 3–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zika, C., “Hosts, Processions and Pilgrimages in Fifteenth-Century Germany,” in Past and Present 118 (1988): 25–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. Honorius Augustodunensis, Patrologiae Latinae, ed. Migne, J.-P. (Paris: Garnier Fratres Editores, 1895), 172Google Scholar ; Elucidarium 1129 B-D; Gemma animae 554 B–555 B; Eucharisticon 1254 A–1255 B.

15. Gemma animae 555 A.

16. Gemma animae 570 BC.

17. Eucharisticon 1254 A–1255 B.

18. Macy, 112–3.

19. Ibid., 116.

20. Ibid., 119.

21. Ibid., 120.

22. Ibid., 76.

23. Ibid., 81.

24. Ibid., 92.

25. Colledge, Eric, The Medieval Mystics of England (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1961), 5–7Google Scholar.

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27. de Certeau, , “Mystic Speech,” in Heterologies, 91Google Scholar.

28. Hildegard of Bingen, Book of Divine Works, 347–51.

29. Hildegard von Bingen, Scivias, trans. Hozeski, Bruce (Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Company, 1986), 3Google Scholar . See also, Hildegard von Bingen, Scivias, trans. Hart, Mother Columba and Bishop, Jane (New York: Paulist Press, 1990)Google Scholar . All references are to page numbers in the Hozeski edition.

30. This reference to the “real” recalls Roland Barthes' statements that suggest that “our entire civilization has a taste for the reality effect […] whose sole pertinent feature is precisely to signify that the event represented has really taken place.” According to Barthes, historical discourse supposes that, on the one hand, the referent is detached from the discourse; on the other hand, the referent enters into direct relation with the signifier. “In other words, in ‘objective’ history, the ‘real’ is never anything but an unformulated signifier, sheltered behind the apparent omnipotence of the referent.” See Barthes, Roland, The Rustle of Language, trans. Howard, Richard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), 127–128Google Scholar ; 141–8.

31. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, xi.

32. de Certeau, , The Mystic Fable, trans. Smith, Michael B. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 1:2Google Scholar.

33. Patrologiae Latinae 196:686.

34. See, for example, Lagorno, Valerie, “The Medieval Continental Women Mystics: An Introduction,” in An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe, ed. Szarmach, Paul E. (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1984)Google Scholar; Newman, Barbara, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Flanagan, Sabina, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098–1179: A Visionary Life (London: Routlege, 1989)Google Scholar; Dreyer, Elizabeth, Passionate Women: Two Medieval Mystics (New York: Paulist Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Ford-Grabowsky, Mary, “Angels and Archetypes: A Jungian Approach to Saint Hildegard,” in The American Benedictine Review 41:1 (March 1990): 1–19Google Scholar; Lochrie, Karma, “The Language of Transgression: Body, Flesh, and Word in Mystical Discourse,” Speaking Two Languages: Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies, ed. Frantzen, Allen J. (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1991)Google Scholar; The Ordo Virtutum of Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Davidson, Audrey Ekdahl (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992)Google Scholar; Ulrich, Ingeborg, Hildegard of Bingen: Mystic, Healer, Companion of Angels, trans. Maloney, Linda M. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1993)Google Scholar . See also Kirby-Fulton, Kathryn, “A Return to the ‘First Dawn of Justice:’ Hildegard's Vision of Clerical Reform and the Eremitical Life,” in The American Benedictine Review 40:4 (December 1989): 383–407Google Scholar; John, Helen J., “Hildegard of Bingen: A New Twelfth-Century Woman Philosopher?” in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 7:1 (Winter 1992): 115–123CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wiethaus, Ulrike, “Cathar Influences in Hildegard of Bingen's Play Ordo Virtutum,”in The American Benedictine Review 38:2 (June 1987): 192–203Google Scholar . These studies describe Hildegard of Bingen's milieu (historical, cultural, monastic, social), the context for her works (literary, musical, dramatic), and her idiosyncratic capacities (mental, emotional, erotic, spiritual); she is considered in relation to the construction of categories (feminine, woman, and mother) by the male, patriarchal, or patristic culture in the Middle Ages and in relation to medieval constructions of the female body as fissured flesh, sealed body, or abject body.

35. de Certeau, The Writing of History, 4.

36. de Certeau, Mystic Fable, 93.

37. There are different editions of Ordo Virtutum. The Latin text is easily available in Peter Dronke, Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 180–192Google Scholar . The English version of the text can be found in, for example, Hozeski's, Bruce “Ordo Virtutum: Hildegard of Bingen's Liturgical Morality Play,” in Annuale Medievale 13 (1972): 45–69Google Scholar . See also the performing edition, Bingen, Hildegard von, Ordo Virtutum, ed. Davidson, Audrey Ekdahl (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publication, 1984)Google Scholar . All references are to Hozeski's translation.

38. See Potter's and Sheingorn's essay as well as Julia Bolton Holloway's “The Monastic Context of Hildegard's Ordo Virtutum,” in The Ordo Virtutum of Hildegard of Bingen, 31–41; 43–62; 63–77.