Hildegard of Bingen: The Song’s First Female Interpreter
This presentation will consider what the medieval theologian, visionary, and abbess Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) might contribute to the contemporary recovery of The Song of Songs as a feminist resource. Hildegard was one of the most voluminous writers of the twelfth century, and the first Christian woman, whose writings have survived, to systematically interpret the Bible—in addition to homilies on the Gospels and a series of replies to exegetical questions, she regularly quoted, alluded to, and expounded on biblical texts in her expansive visionary-theological trilogy and in her voluminous corpus of letters. According to quotations tallied by the editors of her works, she commented on approximately half the verses of The Song of Songs. Although her interpretations of The Song follow the same allegorical pattern as her male exegetical forebears and contemporaries—with Christ take the role of the male lover, and the female lover identified as the Church, human soul, Virgin Mary, or consecrated virgin—she offers a vision of divine-human intimacy grounded in a positive valuation of the body and of the natural world that was unique for her time. Hildegard was by no means a feminist—she was explicitly committed to upholding the structures of male supremacy and domination in the church and society. But this should not discourage us from listening to the voice of this early female interpreter of The Song of Songs, and how she may help us to see new possibilities in premodern readings. Moreover, we will also consider what, precisely, it means to call Hildegard the “first female interpreter,” pointing to the legacy of marginalization, suppression, and loss of women’s voices.
Karl Shuve is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, where he teaches courses on the history of Christianity in the ancient and medieval periods. His research focuses on the intersection between the interpretation of sacred texts and the construction of gendered identities. In 2016, he published The Song of Songs and the Fashioning of Identity in Early Latin Christianity (Oxford University Press), which argues that this erotic poem was not a problematic text for many early Christian theologians, but was rather a resource that they mined as they debated the nature of the church and of the virtuous life. His current book project, Brides of Christ: The Making of a Metaphor in Late Antiquity, explores how the image of the bride of Christ shaped social relationships and spiritual practices in early and medieval Christianity.