DIDACTIC STRATEGIES IN HILDEGARD OF BINGEN’S VISIONARY TRILOGY
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ures traditionally are externalized forces that exist within the reader’s mind, so that in making these words their own, the readers are examining their own minds. The characters’ speech is written so as to be recognizable and even sensible, at least at first sight. Take, for example, the following clash between Petulantia and Vera Disciplina: Secunda autem imago ut canis erat, qui uenari solet. Et super posteriores pedes suos stabat; anteriores autem super baculum sursum erectum posuerat, et cauda sua eam commouendo ludebat. Et dicebat: Quid oberit homini letitia, per quam modice in risum moueatur? Nam ipse pulchrum spiraculum in anima est, unde etiam symphonialis esse debet. Quis est homo qui semper mortalis esse possit? Nemo. Quapropter letetur, dum letari potest. Et iterum de predicta turbida nube audiui uocem huic imagini responsum dantem: Tu scelestissima, in squalidis moribus ioculantium hominum circumflanti uento similis es, ac in uarietate tua uermibus terram effodientibus assimilaris. Nam cum homines te uiderint, tibi consentiunt, quibus tu gaudens occurris, sicut mos canis est; ac eis hoc modo persuades ut exoptent quicquid uoluerint. Sed et otiosa et criminalia uerba profers, quibus corda hominum uulneras; ac mores tuos in consuetudinem legis tibi constituis, quibus homines comprehendis.45
Vera Disciplina herself warns that the worst defect of Petulantia, as yet unidentified and depicted as a dog, is that she has the talent to win people’s favour and the power to delude them. Indeed, her words sound very reasonable and good-humoured, and there seems no reason to renounce them.46 On the contrary, these words would probably not fail to remind people of their own similar thoughts. Petulantia’s speech employs a treacherous logic and seeming objectivity, providing pseudo-logical arguments in a way that does not much differ from other didactic-rhetorical discourse in the trilogy. It shows the reader how logical and persuasive the arguments of the devil may sound, and how much they may in form resemble the teachings of the Church. Hildegard, who was involved in preaching against the Cathars, knew from first-hand experience that heretic teaching is not necessarily easily recognizable as such for common people. This is where “perverse reason” is at work, which is reason unsupported by faith
Liber vite meritorum I 3-4, p. 14, ll. 134-152 (n. 23). Susanne Ruge points this out as well, and further notes the great similarity of these speeches to the spoken word. S. Ruge, “The Theology of Repentance: Observations on the Liber vite meritorum”, in A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. by B.M. Kienzle, Beverly D. L. Stoudt and G. Ferzoco, Leiden, 2013, p. 235. 45 46