Beschreibung:

Large fragment of a leaf from Hildegard of Bingen, Explanatio Symboli Sancti Athanasii, an explanation of the Athanasian Creed, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment, in situ on the binding of a sixteenth-century printed book [Germany (perhaps Rupertsberg or Eibingen), late thirteenth or early fourteenth century] Lower half of a leaf, reused on a sixteenth-century binding, with remains of double column of 18 lines in a good and spiky Germanic early gothic bookhand, using w in place of v in words such as ewangelium, capitals touched in red, remains of a marginalia set within an angular frame obscured within turn-ups of back board, the leaf arranged on the sixteenth-century book as a limp parchment binding with edges folded in, with a column of manuscript text visible in the centre of each board, text obscured around spine of later book and damaged by small holes there, text on outer surfaces of later binding scrubbed clean, spots, stains and small holes, else fair and legible condition, overall: 190 by 295mm. This is a hitherto unrecorded and completely unstudied fragment of this work by perhaps the most important female mystic of the Middle Ages; one of only three or four manuscripts of the work to survive Provenance: From a codex perhaps produced within the monastery of Rupertsberg (founded 1147) or Eibingen (founded 1165), both of which were founded by the author. The text was addressed to the nuns of Rupertsberg, and appears to have had an extremely limited distribution, perhaps not extending outside these two houses (see below). Rupertsberg was closed and its goods transferred to Eibingen in 1632, and both communities were suppressed together in 1803. However, the present fragment had already been reused on a binding of a book that had travelled to Italy by some point in the seventeenth century when it received its first ex libris inscriptions, and the parent manuscript may have been a volume reused for binding material in Rupertsberg itself, and discarded in its present state when they combined with Eibingen in 1632. If it was copied in one of these two communities, then the scribe is most likely to have been a woman, and may well have already been a young inmate of the community while the author was still alive. Text: Few authors in the Middle Ages were women, and even fewer were in a position that enabled them to reach the heights of their intellectual world. Thankfully, Hildegard of Bingen (c. 1098-1179) was in such a position. From a young age she experienced visions and entered the monastery of Disibodenberg as a child oblate. In 1136 she was unanimously elected magistra of the community by its members, and set about moving the nuns of the house to Rupertsberg where they would have greater independence. In 1165 she founded a further house from these nuns at Eibingen. At the age of 42 she received a profound vision instructing her to write down that which you see and hear, and she entered into the life of an author. She was beatified in 1326. The present text is an explanation of the Athanasian Creed composed for the inmates of her own female monastic community at Rupertsberg. It was written in the 1170s in a period of frenzied writing as she entered her seventies and the community feared they might soon lose her. The fragment here contains the parts of the opening of the text, touching on the Creation of the sun, moon and stars, the world and the creatures on it: from sicut etiam in creatione die … (in a slightly variant form to the edited text) to … qui totam Ecclesiam sustentarent. Deinde, reopening in the second column with divinitate, et non in persona … to … divisio est nisi distinc[tio]. This allows us to calculate that slightly less than 50 lines are missing from the top of the leaf, giving us a large page layout of approximately 390 by 260mm. total page size (and probable written space of 250 by 180mm.), in keeping with the large margins surviving here. The emergence of this fragment brings the number