Hildegarde de Bingen, une sainte post-séculière ? La Clôture des merveilles de Lorette Nobécourt

Abstract

HILDEGARD OF BINGEN — A POST-SECULAR SAINT? LA CLÔTURE DES MERVEILLES BY LORETTE NOBÉCOURT Lorette Nobécourt, belonging to the group of contemporary French writers who re-read biblical and hagiographical myths, may be regarded as one of the authors realizing to a greater or lesser extent the foundation of the post-secular thought. As Nobécourt’s novel entitled La Clôture des merveilles. Une vie d’Hildegarde de Bingen 2013 can be seen as a representative example of a post-secular text, it has been analysed in the present paper. The aim of the article is to seek answers to the following questions: why has the contemporary French writer decided to present St Hildegard and how has the eponymous heroine been delineated in the novel? What is the relation between the Hildegard created by Nobécourt and the female narrator or, to take the argument one step further, what kind of spirituality do they represent? Finally, what does the word clôture used in the title mean to the contemporary laic reader? The present analysis of the novel, being an attempt to give answers to the above-mentioned questions, has been conducted on the basis of Charles Taylor’s theory of “the place of fullness” and John A. McClure’s concept of “new monasticism.”