¹ On the need for a study of Hildegard's influence see Lerner, R. E., ‘Medieval Prophecy and Religious Dissent,’ Past and Present 72 (1976) 9 and n. 19. On the decline in Hildegard's reputation and influence in the later Middle Ages see Schrader, Marianna, Dictionnaire de spiritualité 7.519.Google Scholar

² See Schrader, , ibid. Google Scholar

³ Gebeno called the compilation the Pentachron seu speculum futurorum temporum sive de quinque temporibus (see Pitra, J. B., ed., Analecta Sacra VIII [Montecassino 1982] 483–88 for a partial edition of the text). On the Pentachron see Bloomfield, M. W. and Reeves, M., ‘The Penetration of Joachism into Northern Europe,’ Speculum 29 (1954) 789–90; Hauréau, B., ed., Histoire littéraire de la France (Paris 1888) XXX 616–19; Czarski, Charles, ‘The Prophecies of St. Hildegard of Bingen’ (diss. University of Kentucky 1982) 216.Google Scholar

⁴ See Lerner, R. E., The Powers of Prophecy (Berkeley 1983) 108 n. 58; Dufeil, M.-M., Guillaume de Saint-Amour et la polémique universitaire parisienne 1250–1259 (Paris 1972) 317, 342, and n. 181.Google Scholar

⁵ On Hildegard's renown among contemporary chroniclers see McDonnell, Ernest W., The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture (New York 1969) 294–95 especially; van der Linde, A., Handschriften der Königlichen Landesbibliothek in Wiesbaden (Wiesbaden 1877) 91ff.; Haeusler, Martin, Das Ende der Geschichte in der mittelalterlichen Weltchronistik (Cologne 1980) passim. Caesarius of Heisterbach (discussed below) and Albert von Stade (discussed in Haeusler 64–72) suggest especially that Hildegard's message of clerical chastisement had been influential. Haeusler writes: ‘Besonderes Augenmerk liegt auf Kritik am Klerus; in voller Länge gibt Albert die Passagen aus Hildegards Liber divinorum operum wieder, die kaum verhüllt Mißstände in der Kirche geißeln: “Scelera eorum super nos cadunt, et omnis ecclesia super eos arescit, quia, quod iustum est, non clamant, et legem destruunt, quem ad modum lupi agnos devorant; atque in crapula voraces sunt et adulteria quam plurima perpetrant et per talia peccata absque misericordia nos iudicant”’ (Haeusler 68, citing Albert's, Annales, ed. Lappenberg, J. M. in MGH SS [1859] 16.331 lines 15–18. Albert is citing Hildegard's Liber divinorum operum 3.10.16 [PL 197.1017d–1018a]). Lodewijch van Velthem also made extensive use of Gebeno's compilation of Hildegard's prophecies in his continuation of the Speculum historiale (Vincent of Beauvais had already made mention of one of Hildegard's prophecies: see Haeusler, 85–86 and McDonnell, 292–93). Lodewijch, Richer de Sens, and Matthew Paris, among others, gave Hildegard's message of clerical chastisement an anti-mendicant slant (see Hauesler, 64–65 et passim and see below, n. 39).Google Scholar

⁶ Hildegard died in 1179, and Gebeno, finished the Pentachron ca. 1220.Google Scholar

⁷ The letter to the clergy of Cologne is edited in PL 197.244–53; however, there are interpolations into the original text (see Schrader, M. and Führkötter, A., Die Echtheit des Schrifttums der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen (Cologne 1956) 9495, 169). The section from the opening of the extract to ‘alia et pejora venient’ (PL 197.249c) is part of the first interpolation. Schrader and Führkötter argue that the interpolations, although they cannot be proved genuine, ‘do bear the stamp of Hildegard's style’ (170). The letter can be dated about 1169. See Czarski 194–95 n. 125. See Pitra 486–87 for Gebeno's excerpt and discussion of it. The excerpt circulated independently in a number of medieval MSS (see, for example, Paris, B.N. lat. 3319; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 107 and 288; and Oxford, Bodleian Hatton 56 [S.C. 4062]).Google Scholar

⁸ See Russell, J. B., Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages (Berkeley 1965) 220 especially et passim. The power of the populus errans, who are the focus of the passages of the Cologne letter discussed below, are, for Hildegard, the logical outcome of the unchecked growth of the Cathar heretics, which she chastises both the clergy and the people of Cologne for allowing to persist (see PL 197.253). On the growth of these heretical groups see Führkötter, Adelgundis, Hildegard von Bingen: Briefwechsel (Salzburg 1965) 168; Russell 220ff.; and Kieckhefer, Richard, Repression of Heresy in Medieval Germany (Liverpool 1979) 12–13. As Russell and Kieckhefer make clear, Cologne and Mainz were both problem areas for heresy in twelfth-century Germany. Hildegard also wrote to the clergy of Mainz on the same subject (see Briefwechsel 173ff. and see below, n. 16). Gebeno is especially exercised by what Hildegard says of the heretical groups (see Pitra 487).Google Scholar

⁹ See McDonnell, 294.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Translating from Hilka, Alfons, Die Wundergeschichten des Caesarius von Heisterbach (Bonn 1933) III 245–46: ‘Timemus, ne isti sint illi, de quibus Spiritus sanctus per os beate Hildegardis prophetavit, per quos clerus affligetur et civitas periclitabitur.’Google Scholar

¹¹ See I Hilka 147–49.Google Scholar

¹² ‘Si divinitus prophetatum est, necesse est ut impleatur,’ ibid. III 246.Google Scholar

¹³ See, e.g., Pierce the Ploughmans Crede (EETS 30; London 1867) 26, line 703 and note; Arnold, Thomas, ed., Select English Works of Wyclif (Oxford 1871) III 413; and further references in Stacey, John, John Wyclif and Reform (Philadelphia 1964) 43. On Wyclif's (and Wycliffite) citations of Hildegard see Szittya, Penn R., The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature (Princeton 1986) 173–74 and 220 n. 103, and for further references to ‘Insurgent gentes’ among English writers, 219–21, among which are listed citations from Jack Upland, Gower's Vox Clamantis, Pecock's The Repressor and Wimbledon's Sermon (however, Wimbledon is not, as Szittya suggests, quoting from ‘Insurgent gentes,’ but rather from Hildegard's Scivias [Part III, Vision 11, ch. 7]: see the note in the edition of the sermon by Ione Kemp Knight [Pittsburgh 1967] 134). Not all citations of Hildegard by English writers were to the spurious ‘Insurgent gentes.’ See my doctoral thesis, ‘The Voice of Honest Indignation: A Study of Reformist Apocalypticism in Relation to Piers Plowman’ (University of York 1985; forthcoming as a book by Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar

¹⁴ See PL 188.1152c-d, and Czarski, 23.Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Czarski, 44–46, and Rauh, Horst D., Das Bild des Antichrist (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, n.f. 9; Münster 1973).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Edited in Pitra 347–51. Hildegard's typology of the pseudo-prophets as forerunners of Antichrist who have arisen (or will arise) at various stages in history occurs in the Liber divinorum operum (PL 197.1031d–1032a, and see col. 1029d) as well as in the letters to the clergy of Cologne and Mainz. For a detailed discussion of her Antichrist typology see Rauh 489–96. The Mainz prophecy is extremely obscure and is too difficult to be discussed fully here (see my dissertation 195ff.). The important section runs: ‘Nam viginti et tres anni ac quatuor menses sunt, quod a perversis operibus nominum, quae ab ore nigrae bestiae efflantur, quatuor venti per quatuor angulos angulorum in magnam ruinam moti sunt, cum eadem opera supra eos ascendebant: ita quod in Oriente vicissitudo squalidorum morum efflata est; et in Occidente blasphemia et oblivio Dei in sanctos ejus, per famam vituli et per culturam idolorum sanctum sacrificium cruciando; et in Austro odiosorum vitiorum, atque in Septentrionem phylacteria vestimentorum secundum tortuosum serpentem dilatata, quae cum omnibus praedictis malis postea supervenientibus contaminata sunt. Sed tamen sexaginta anni sunt atque viginti et quatuor menses, quod antiquus serpens cum phylacteriis vestimentorum populos deludere coepit’ (Pitra 349). Briefly, the prophecy (probably predicated upon Osee 4.19) uses the image of cosmic ill-winds to describe how clerical negligence (‘blasphemy and obliviousness of God among his holy ones’) and idolatry (‘through the fame of a calf’) arose first ‘in the West.’ For Hildegard, the Israelites' worship of idols symbolized simony and constituted the first wave of forerunners. In an obscure reference to ‘phylacteries of vestments, enlarged according to the crooked serpent,’ Hildegard brings on the second group of forerunners in describing how clerical corruption arose ‘in the North.’ A clerical audience would no doubt have picked up this reference to Christ's charges against the Pharisees in Matt. 23.5, but the prophecy's obscurity probably accounts for its lack of popularity with later anti-mendicant writers when compared to the Cologne letter. The third group of forerunners is of course the heretics themselves who form the subject of the letter. See the discussion in my doctoral thesis on Hildegard's conflation of the antecedents of Antichrist in this prophecy.Google Scholar

¹⁷ See Elizabeth of Schönau's account of one of her visions in which her questioning of the angel who appears to her reflects genuine confusion about the attractiveness of the heretics (Liber viarum Dei, ed. Roth, F. W. E., Die Visiones der hl. Elisabeth [Brünn 1884] 104–105).Google Scholar

¹⁸ On later medieval anti-mendicantism see especially Szittya, Penn R., ‘The Antifraternal Tradition in Middle English Literature,’ Speculum 52 (1977) 287–313, and the numerous references to primary and secondary sources cited there, as well as the citations of other scholarship in notes 27–38 below.Google Scholar

¹⁹ See 2 Timothy 3.5.Google Scholar

²⁰ See Knowles, David, The Religious Orders in England (Cambridge 1955) II 64ff. See also my dissertation 458ff., on the friars' involvement with calls for clerical disendowment. This involvement of the friars (particularly in the 1370s) would have made it seem quite likely that ‘Hildegard’ was correct in predicting a group of mendicants who would use their influence with the ‘secular princes’ to abscond with what belonged to the ‘true pastors’ (to use the language of ‘Insurgent gentes’).Google Scholar

²¹ See Dronke, Peter, Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge 1984) 165.Google Scholar

²² On the Simon Magus legend see Emmerson, R. K., Antichrist in the Middle Ages (Seattle 1981) 26–28.Google Scholar

²³ See the discussion below. William Dunbar's poem ‘Lucina schynnyng in silence of the nicht,’ ed. Kinsley, James, William Dunbar: Poems (Oxford 1958) 49 and 120, echoes this motif.Google Scholar

²⁴ See 2 Timothy 3.6.Google Scholar

²⁵ See the De periculis novissimorum temporum of William of St. Amour, ed. Brown, E. in Appendix to Gratius, O., Fasciculus rerum expetendarum (London 1690) 18–41.Google Scholar

²⁶ See Szittya, , ‘Antifraternal Tradition’ 287.Google Scholar

²⁷ See Szittya, , ‘Antifraternal Tradition’ and Szittya, (1986) for citations and discussions of recent scholarship.Google Scholar

²⁸ See Leff, G., Paris and Oxford Universities in the 13th and 14th Centuries (New York 1968) 260ff.Google Scholar

²⁹ See Szittya, , ‘Antifraternal Tradition.’ Google Scholar

³⁰ See Dawson, James Doyne, ‘William of St. Amour and the Apostolic Tradition,’ Mediaeval Studies 40 (1978) 234–325.Google Scholar

³¹ See Leff, , Paris 257ff.Google Scholar

³² Reeves, M., The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford 1969) 146.Google Scholar

³³ See Williams, Arnold, ‘Relations between the Mendicant Friars and the Secular Clergy in England in the Later Fourteenth Century,’ Annuale Mediaevale 1 (1960), especially 93; Walsh, K., Richard Fitzralph in Oxford, Avignon and Armagh (Oxford 1981) 370.Google Scholar

³⁴ See Reeves, , Influence 59–70 and Szittya, , ‘Antifraternal Tradition’ 291–93.Google Scholar

³⁵ See De periculis 19 et passim .Google Scholar

³⁶ On Rutebeuf see McDonnell, , Part 5, chapter V, ‘The Protest of Rutebeuf,’ and Lucas, H. H., ed., Rutebeuf: Poemes concernant l'Université de Paris (Paris 1952). On Jean de Meun see Reeves, , Influence 63, and Fleming, John V., The Roman de la Rose: A Study in Allegory and Iconography (Princeton 1969) 164–71.Google Scholar

³⁷ See Fratris Johannis Pecham: Tractatus tres de paupertate, edd. Kingsford, C. L., Little, A. G., and Tocco, F. (Aberdeen 1910) 18. Scholars now accept that the Collectiones is a genuine work. See Szittya, (1986) 17ff. This citation of Hildegard's prophecies, or one similar to it, provoked an anti-prophetic and anti-feminist diatribe against Hildegard by the Franciscan John Pecham (Pecham 64 and 76–77). On Pecham's reaction see also Bierbaum, M., Bettelorden und Weltgeistlichkeit an der Universität Paris (Münster i. W. 1920) 271–72, and the discussion of ‘Insurgent gentes’ in my dissertation 396ff. and n. 53.Google Scholar

³⁸ See Dufeil, 317 and n. 181, and 342; see also Bierbaum, ibid. Dufeil seems to suggest on the basis of style that the prophecy is the work of William of St. Amour, ‘mais une main parisienne plus calme a remanié certain passages’ (342); however, it is impossible to say who wrote it or when it was written (I would agree with Dufeil that it has a kind of smugness about it which is foreign to William's style and may be the result of the security of anonymity — or pseudonymity). The only thing which is abolutely certain is that Hildegard did not write it: it deals with transparently anti-mendicant issues in the narrow and specific terms in which they were discussed by the school of William of St. Amour only decades after her death (which was before the inception of the mendicant orders in any case). The fact that William himself refers to the prophecy several times in the Collectiones (Szittya [1986] 221) establishes that it was already in circulation in his lifetime and suggests to me that it was a production of his own circle; however, this is only an educated guess. For a number of stylistic, ideological, and historical reasons (see below) an attribution to Hildegard could never be seriously entertained. (In this respect, Szittya's remark on 221 is somewhat misleading, although perhaps unintentionally so: ‘Like Hildegard, William resorted to the apocalyptic books of the Bible for prophecies of the friars …’).Google Scholar

³⁹ See Dufeil, 317. It may be significant that there are (to my knowledge) no manuscripts which contain both the genuine Cologne letter and the spurious ‘Insurgent gentes,’ something which probably indicates that the two pieces were of interest to two different types of audience. (See my doctoral thesis 619 n. 62). It is, however, clear that some medieval writers knew both works, e.g., Richer de Sens (see MGH SS 25.306) and Matthew of Paris (see Haeusler, 57ff.) Dr. George Rigg has kindly informed me of a versification of the Cologne letter (!) by Henry of Avranches in MS Cambridge, University Library Dd.11.78, which Matthew Paris, the scribe of the MS, headed ‘Prophecia Sancte Hildegardis de novis fratribus.’Google Scholar

⁴⁰ There is a list of manuscripts in Dufeil 342 n. 181 and one in Szittya, (1986) 220, to which should be added MS London, British Library, Cotton Domitian A IX fol. 17^r-v. I am hoping to produce a critical edition of the prophecy, but the textual situation is somewhat chaotic. At certain points there are marked differences between the texts which I have seen; and from Dufeil's listing of what he considered to be relevant biblical texts, it looks as if he had a somewhat different version again in front of him (he does not specify which MS he used). The prophecy has been twice transcribed, once in Little, A. G. and Easterling, R., The Franciscans and Dominicans of Exeter (Exeter 1927) 60–61, and once in Fabricius, Johann Albert, Bibliotheca Latina mediae et infimae aetatis (Florence 1858) 243–44. The first line in Little and Easterling's text reads, ‘Insurgent gentes que comedent pecuniam (?) populi,’ in which pecuniam may be a transcription error or a textual variant from the more usual peccata (I have not seen MS Exeter, Chapter 3625 fol. 171, from which it was transcribed).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Szittya, (1986) 219.Google Scholar

⁴² 15.51, Piers Plowman: An Edition of the C-Text, ed. Pearsall, Derek (London 1978) 248.Google Scholar

⁴³ Besides the three most important texts mentioned above (2 Tim. 3, Matt. 23, and 2 Thess. 3), there is evidence of (as Dufeil says, 342 n. 181) ‘mots tirés de’ 1 Tim. 5.13 (although this text is referring to women, not men), Luke 1.52, Ps. 14.5, and possibly Job 5.15. The text quoted here is not found in Fabricius, but occurs in a number of other MSS I have seen (e.g., Dublin, Trinity College 516 fol. 42^r). The next quotation is taken from Little and Easterling's text.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ On apocalyptic reformist prophecy, see my dissertation.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Little and Easterling 61. Fabricius' text reads ‘principibus Ecclesiarum’ for ‘principibus secularibus.’Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Marc. 7.28, 3 Reg. 14.11, Ps 21.17. The following passage is from Fabricius 243.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Matt. 23 passim.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Pr. 11.11, possibly Ps. 31.9, James 1.26.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Ps. 30.7.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Pr. 1.16; 6.18 and Is. 59.7.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Little and Easterling 61. Among plausible biblical texts see Pr. 11.25, Col. 2.4, and Osee 4.11, as well as the standard Matt. 23 charges against the Pharisees.Google Scholar

⁵² This and the quotation below are from Little and Easterling 61. For another example of the ‘building too high’ motif see Piers Plowman C 3.84, ed. cit. 69. A number of biblical texts speak of building in high places negatively, e.g., 3 Reg. 14.23.Google Scholar

⁵³ Hildegard's periodization of the future is outlined in the Liber divinorum operum, PL 197.1005–38. See Czarski chapter III; and Töpfer, B., Das kommende Reich des Friedens (Berlin 1964) 33–44.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ PL 197.266a.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ This paper is dedicated to Sr. Adelgundis Führkötter, o.s.b., on the occasion of her eighty-first birthday, in gratitude for her monumental scholarly contributions toward our understanding and appreciation of St. Hildegard. It was delivered initially at the first session of the International Society for Hildegard von Bingen Studies, held in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on May 11, 1985. I would like to thank George Rigg of the University of Toronto for his advice and encouragement and Penn R. Szittya of Georgetown University for his careful reading of the article.Google Scholar