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Chapter 11 - The Ordo virtutum and Benedictine Monasticism

from Part III - Music, Manuscripts, Illuminations, and Scribes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2021

By
Alison Altstatt
Edited by
Jennifer Bain
Jennifer Bain
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia
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Summary

The Ordo virtutum (the Order of the Virtues) is a sung Latin drama that Hildegard of Bingen completed c. 1152 for her newly founded community at Rupertsberg. The drama has invited a multitude of modern responses due to the originality of its language and imagery and the many possible comparisons to her own visionary and theological writing. Yet this work is firmly grounded in the theology and liturgy of the twelfth-century Benedictine convent. This chapter examines how Hildegard draws on the Benedictine rule, the rite of the Consecration of Virgins from twelfth-century Mainz, and the processional and dramatic rituals of the medieval convent to create an embodied drama of the soul’s salvation that is specific to the female monastic experience. Hildegard further emplots the struggle for the soul’s salvation in a narrative which borrows elements from the Descensus Christi ad Infernos, a fourth-century addition to the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus and the liturgical commemorations of its central event: Christ’s descent into, or harrowing, of hell. These texts and liturgies provide important context for understanding the dramatic situation and poetic language of the Ordo virtutum.

Keywords

Hildegard of BingenOrdo virtutummedieval dramaliturgical dramarepresentational ritesliturgyBenedictine nunsconsecration of virginsmedieval processionsmedieval chant
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen , pp. 235 - 256
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Primary Sources

Hildegard of Bingen. Lieder: Faksimile Riesencodex (Hs.2) der Hessischen Landesbibliothek Wiesbaden, fol. 466–481v, ed. Welker, Lorenz. Commentary by Michael Klaper. Elementa musicae 1. Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1998. [Facsimile]Google Scholar
Hildegard of Bingen Ordo virtutum. In Hildegardis Bingensis: Opera minora, ed. Dronke, Peter. Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 226. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007, 505–521.Google Scholar
Hildegard of Bingen Ordo virtutum, ed. Davidson, Audrey Ekdahl. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985.Google Scholar
Hildegard of Bingen Ordo virtutum, ed. and French trans. Ricossa, Luca. Geneva: Lulu, 2013.Google Scholar
Hildegard of Bingen Ordo Virtutum: A Comparative Edition, ed. Corrigan, Vincent. Lion’s Bay, BC: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2013.Google Scholar

Secondary Sources

For a complete list of recordings of the Ordo virtutum, see the online discography of Hildegard’s music: Roberge, Pierre-F. Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179): A Discography. Updates by Todd McComb. www.medieval.org/emfaq/composers/hildegard.htmlGoogle Scholar
Hildegard von Bingen in Portrait: Ordo Virtutum, directed by Michael Fields and Evelyn Tubb. DVD. BBC/Opus Arte OA 0874 D, 2003.Google Scholar
Sequentia. Ordo virtutum. LP and CD. Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 77051-2-RG, 1982.Google Scholar
Davidson, Audrey Ekdahl, ed. The Ordo Virtutum of Hildegard of Bingen: Critical Studies. Early Drama, Art, and Music Monograph Series, 18. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992.Google Scholar
Dronke, Peter. Nine Medieval Plays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Fassler, Margot E. “Allegorical Architecture in Scivias: Hildegard’s Setting for the Ordo Virtutum.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 67, no. 2 (2014): 317–378.Google Scholar
Norton, Michael. Liturgical Drama and the Reimagining of Medieval Theater: Early Drama, Art, and Music. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2017.Google Scholar
Rankin, Susan. “Liturgical Drama.” In Crocker, Richard and Hiley, David, eds., The New Oxford History of Music, Vol. 2: The Early Middle Ages to 1300. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, 310–352.Google Scholar
Yardley, Ann Bagnall. Performing Piety: Musical Culture in Medieval English Nunneries. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.Google Scholar

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