The twelfth century German Christian mystic and prophetess Hildegard of Bingen, sometimes known as the ‘Sybil of the Rhine’, (1) has of late come back into fashion with a slew of biographies and other books associating her with feminism and so-called ‘female empowerment’. (2)
These new works almost routinely ignore parts of Hildegard’s theological ideas that don’t agree with their portrayal of her as a medieval Emily Pankhurst.
A great example of this is her vitriolic comments on the subject of jews and Judaism, which have been representatively downplayed by one biographer as ‘a product of her times’ with the necessary implication that Hildegard ‘didn’t mean’ what she said. (3)
This tendency to claim that Hildegard’s ‘anti-Semitism’ - really just medieval anti-Judaism – was something that she ‘didn’t mean’ is simply put an outright denial of the person that Hildegard was and what she believed. To elevate parts of her theology and scientific accomplishment as many of her biographers do, while ignoring the important context of what she thought and why she thought it is not only intellectually inconsistent, but absurd.
Even worse is the other prevailing (and opposing) tendency among Hildegard’s recent biographers where they simply don’t mention her views on the jews and pretend they didn’t exist by virtue of their apparent conspiracy of silence on the subject. (4)
Hildegard’s actual views on the subject of jews and Judaism were framed – as was normal until the mid-nineteenth century – within a Christian, and in this case devoutly Catholic, worldview. She regarded jews, Pagans and ‘bad Christians’ as being essentially in the same position since they did not heed the light of Jesus Christ and his Church. (5)
The essence of Hildegard’s criticism as it applies to jews (as well as Muslims) is that they are exponent of a ‘dried-up faith’ (a-la Arnold Toynbee’s later characterisation of Judaism as a fossil religion) rather than the ‘living faith’ of Jesus Christ. (6)
Jews are proud in their obdurate ways, (7) but Hildegard held that if, like any pagan or unbeliever, they came to the light of Christ and abandoned the vanity of the world. Then they would be received and find true faith in the Christian life. (8)
She envisioned that upon the second coming of Christ; some of the jews would be converted the truth of Christianity, (9) but she also believed that the jews – who are inherently prideful, obstinate and obsessed with material things – (10) would be exterminated by God and his newly invigorated Christian followers as vengeance for the crucifixion of Jesus and their ferocious unbelief. (11)
Thus Hildegard of Bingen can hardly be described a friend of the jews and, as with Martin Luther four centuries later, believed that while a few jews could and would be saved. The majority of jewry would have be exterminated by God and his faithful servants as inveterate criminals against the divine.
References
(1) Andrea Janelle Dickens, 2009, ‘The Female Mystic: Great Women Thinkers of the Middle Ages’, 1st Edition, I. B. Tauris: London, p. 25
(2) For example Barbara Newman, 1998, ‘Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard of Bingen's Theology of the Feminine’, 2nd Edition, University of California Press: Berkeley
(3) Fiona Maddocks, 2001, ‘Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age’, 1st Edition, Headline: London, pp. 85-86
(4) For example cf. Dickens, Op. Cit., pp. 25-38
(5) Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook, 2016, ‘Hildegard of Bingen: Essential Writings and Chants of a Christian Mystic – Annotated & Explained’, 1st Edition, Skylight Paths: Woodstock, p. 104
(6) Matthew Fox, 1985, ‘Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen’, 1st Edition, Inner Traditions: Rochester, p. 149
(7) Ibid., p. 148
(8) Matthew Fox, 1987, ‘Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs’, 1st Edition, Inner Traditions: Rochester, p. 203
(9) Hildegard of Bingen, Visions, 9:11; 10:17; 10:20 (Fox Translation)
(10) Fox, ‘Illuminations’, p. 148
(11) Ibid.