A History of the Church in the Middle Ages by Logan F Donald Donald

Author:Logan, F Donald Donald [Logan, F Donald Donald]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781136315978
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2013-01-28T06:58:03+00:00

Plate 11 Hildegard of Bingen’s vision of extinguished stars. Reproduced by permission of Brepols.

explanation but which she felt was divine in origin. The visionary Hildegard could have suffered from migraine episodes, since what she describes fits a classical description of migraine attacks. We often mistakenly think of such attacks solely in terms of headaches, which is not strictly speaking the case. Frequently migraine experiences affect vision. Most commonly, when this happens, one sees a connected series of inverse v’s or lightning-like flashes across the field of vision, which do not disappear when one closes the eyes. They are sometimes called ‘scintillating scotomata’ or ‘fortification spectra’ (because they can resemble crenellated structures). ‘Floaters’ often appear in migraine incidents and look like clouds. Hildegard’s ‘extinguished stars vision’, which was illustrated in a contemporary manuscript, closely resembles a form of migraine experience. An aura frequently occurs in the early stage of a migraine attack and can include hallucinations, which the subject can be convinced are entirely objective. The sicknesses which Hildegard experienced frequently in her life are consistent with severe migraine attacks, from which one typically recovers, as did Hildegard, with renewed vigour. Dr Oliver Sacks, long a specialist in the subject, concludes, ‘The visions of Hildegard … [were] indisputably migrainous’. That her visions may be explained in a neuro-psychological way should not diminish the importance of their content. In such a state with unusual visual experiences occurring, Hildegard might quite understandably have thought them experiences from God and that, consequently, what she was thinking while having such experiences came directly from God. Her Scivias, then, could be seen as the outpouring of Hildegard’s soul as the result of these experiences. It provides a view, at times brilliant, of the Christian view of life from the fall of Adam and Eve to the Last Judgement and emphasizes the coming of Jesus and his church and its sacraments as well as other themes such as angels, Lucifer and the anti-Christ. Whatever its source, the Scivias stands in a commanding place in medieval religious literature and its author in the first rank of remarkable women of any age.

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