Saint Hildegard’s Vegetal Psycho-Physio-Theology

Michael Marder

doi:10.3390/rel9110353

Abstract

Besides a series of psycho-physiological correspondences between parts of the soul and physical processes, one finds in Hildegard’s corpus an entire hagiography and a theography mapped onto parts of plants in a sort of spiritual botany. The analogies mixed together with the non-analogical emanations of viriditas are complex, insofar as they involve particular species of plants or plant organs, psychic faculties, and chief actors in the Judeo-Christian theological drama.

Highlights

Besides a series of psycho-physiological correspondences between parts of the soul and physical processes, one finds in Hildegard’s corpus an entire hagiography and a theography mapped onto parts of plants in a sort of spiritual botany
There, aspects of political organization correspond to parts of the psyche: the appetites are the lot of the workers, thumos is the province of the warrior class, and reason is the mark of philosopher-kings
(331a–b)—that could be transposed onto the states of healthy and sick bodies. This last point is crucial to the theory of vegetal life that Hildegard of Bingen delineates in her Physica

Summary

Introduction

Besides a series of psycho-physiological correspondences between parts of the soul and physical processes, one finds in Hildegard’s corpus an entire hagiography and a theography mapped onto parts of plants in a sort of spiritual botany. She is loath to exclude the plant kingdom from the spiritual sphere: physically expressed in heat, the powers (vires) of plants are the metaphysical reverberations of their anima—the animating principle, translatable as “soul” and, later on, “mind.” Such powers belong under the heading of viriditas, the greening green, the self-refreshing capacity of finite existence, which Hildegard originally formulated with reference to vegetal life.

Results

Conclusion