Chapter IX: Birth and Death and the Nature of the Soul

The method by which the soul enters the body is set forth in a very striking vision in the _Scivias_ and is illustrated in the Wiesbaden Codex B by a no less remarkable miniature (Plate XIX). The soul, which contains the element of wisdom, passes into the infant’s body while yet within the mother’s womb. The _Wisdom of God_ is represented as a four-square object, with its angles set to the four quarters of the earth, this form being the symbol of stability. From it a long tube-like process descends into the mother’s womb. Down this there passes into the child a bright object, described variously as ‘spherical’ and as ‘shapeless’, which ‘illumines the whole body’ and becomes or develops into the soul.

The birth scene is strikingly portrayed. In the foreground lies the mother with the head and shoulders supported and the right arm raised. In her womb is the infant in the position known to obstetricians as a ‘transverse presentation’. Around the child may be distinguished clear traces of the uterine membranes. Near the couch are ranged a group of ten figures who carry vessels containing the various qualities of the child. Above and to the left the Evil One may be seen pouring some noxious substance into one of these vessels, or perhaps abstracting some element of good. The whole scene suggests the familiar fairy tale in which, while all bring pleasant gifts to the child’s birth, there comes at last the old witch or the ill-used relative who adds a quota of spitefulness.

The scene is described and expounded as follows:

‘Behold, I saw upon earth men carrying milk in earthen vessels
and making cheeses therefrom. Some was of the thick kind from
which firm cheese is made, some of the thinner sort from which
more porous [_tenuis_] cheese is made, and some was mixed with
corruption [_tabes_] and of the sort from which bitter cheese is
made. And I saw the likeness of a woman having a complete human
form within her womb. And then, by a secret disposition of the
Most High Craftsman, a fiery sphere having none of the lineaments
of a human body possessed the heart of the form, and reached the
brain and transfused itself through all the members.... And I saw
that many circling eddies possessed the sphere and brought it
earthward, but with ever renewed force it returned upward and with
wailing asked, “I, wanderer that I am, where am I?” “In death’s
shadow.” “And where go I?” “In the way of sinners.” “And what is my
hope?” “That of all wanderers.”’[108] The vision is explained as
follows: ‘Those whom thou seest carrying milk in earthen vessels
are in the world, men and women alike, having in their bodies the
seed of mankind from which are procreated the various kinds of
human beings. Part is thickened because the seed in its strength
is well and truly concocted, and this produces forceful men to
whom are allotted gifts both spiritual and carnal.... And some
had cheeses less firmly curdled, for they in their feebleness
have seed imperfectly tempered, and they raise offspring mostly
stupid, feeble, and useless.... And some was mixed with corruption
... for the seed in that brew cannot be rightly raised, it is
invalid and makes misshapen men who are bitter, distressed, and
oppressed of heart, so that they may not lift their gaze to higher
things....[109] And often in forgetfulness of God and by the
mocking devil, a _mistio_ is made of the man and of the woman and
the thing born therefrom is deformed, for parents who have sinned
against me return to me crucified in their children.’[110] (Compare
Constantine _De humana natura_, sections ‘De perfectione’ and ‘De
impeditione’.)

Hildegard thus supposes that the qualities and form of a child are inherited from its parents, but that two factors, the formless soul from the Almighty and the corrupt fluid instilled by the devil, also contribute to the character of offspring. This is the usual mediaeval view and is broadly portrayed in the figure.

The strange conception of the body being formed from the seed, as cheese is precipitated and curdled from milk, is doubtless derived from a passage in the Book of Job:

‘Hast thou not poured me out as milk,
And curdled me like cheese?
Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh,
And knit me together with bones and sinews’ (Job x. 10, 11).[111]

When the body has thus taken shape there enters into it the soul which, though at first shapeless, gradually assumes the form of its host, the earthly tabernacle; and at death the soul departs through the mouth with the last breath, as a fully developed naked human shape, to be received by devils or angels as the case may be (Plate XX).

Plate XXIII. THE VISION OF THE TRINITY]

During its residence in the body the soul plays the part usually assigned to it in the earlier mediaeval psychology, before the ideas of Nemesius and Ibn Ghazali had been elaborated and systematized by Albert and Aquinas. Hildegard regards the brain as having three chambers or divisions, corresponding to the three parts of man’s nature, an idea encountered in the writings of St. Augustine. Parallel to these there are, she tells us,

‘three elements in man by which he shows life; to wit, soul
(_anima_), body (_corpus_), and sense (_sensus_). The soul vivifies
the body and inspires the senses; the body attracts the soul and
reveals the senses; the senses affect the soul and allure the
body. For the soul rules the body as a flame throws light into
darkness, and it has two principal powers or limbs, the intellect
(_intellectus_) and the will (_voluntas_); not indeed that the soul
has limbs to move itself, but that it manifests itself thereby as
the sun declares himself by his brightness.... For the intellect
is attached to the soul as the arms to the body: for as the body
is prolonged into arms with fingers and hands attached, so the
intellect is produced from the soul by the operation of its various
powers.’[112]

We need follow Hildegard no further into her maze of micro-cosmology, in which an essential similarity and relationship is discovered between the qualities of the soul, the constitution of the external cosmos, and the structure of the body, a thought which appears as the culmination of her entire system and provides the clue to the otherwise incomprehensible whole.[113]