The Hidden Scheme of the Virtues in Hildegard of Bingen's Ordo Virtutum

Abstract

Hildegard of Bingen is considered to have selected the Virtues of her 'Play of the Virtues' without recourse to a traditional scheme. However, biblical allusions in their main scene align these Virtues with the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Beatitudes, a traditional Virtues' framework. One Virtue, nameless through an erasure, completes the scheme as the exegetically derived Beatitude Virtue 'Heavenly Desire'. Hildegard's music and poetic-dramatic language give a distinct structure to this trajectory of a virtuous Christian life and, unlike Carolingian and twelfth-century authors, she accommodates both common and unusual Virtues in the scheme.