Research Catalog

Title

Cosmos, liturgy, and the arts in the twelfth century : Hildegard's illuminated "Scivias" / Margot E. Fassler.

Author

Fassler, Margot Elsbeth

Publication

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2023]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xvi, 358 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color); 27 cm.

Summary

"In Cosmos, Liturgy, and the Arts, Margot E. Fassler unfurls the ways in which Christian theologians and scientists in the twelfth century thought about the universe, not only in their treatises and scientific calculations, but also in their ecclesiology, their visual arts, music, poetry, and drama. It is only through accounting for all these dimensions of understanding that a sense of the whole can be achieved, for this work, Fassler shows, the Benedictine nun Hildegard of Bingen and her Scivias, her collection of twenty-six religious visions, offer a unique and skillful guide. Fassler examines the connections between Hildegard's formation as a nun, the ways in which she would have experienced and understood the liturgy, and the medieval liturgy's cosmological underpinnings. Exploring how the Feast of All Saints, the day of the nuns' consecration, informs Scivias, Fassler leads readers through the six stages of creation, or the hexameron, as Hildegard understood them, beginning with her beliefs about time before time and matter before matter. Her hexameron is rooted in her own creation as a consecrated virgin, divinely commissioned to write down her visions, the most famous of which presents the universe as "a huge form, rounded and shadowy, and shaped like an egg" from which all emerges until that point at which, its God-given purpose fulfilled, it ceases to exist. Though this view of the cosmos, its creation and workings, is far removed from modern understandings, Fassler's analysis reveals how Hildegard's dynamic and systematic understanding resonates with contemporary issues in a surprising number of ways. To know Hildegard's views both as expressed in this treatise and in its illuminations and songs is to gain otherwise unattainable knowledge about the past and about medieval cosmological investigations in their multidisciplinary splendor"--

Series Statement

Middle Ages series

Uniform Title

Middle Ages series.

Alternative Title

Cosmos, liturgy, and the arts in the 12th century

Subject

• Hildegard, Saint, 1098-1179
• Catholic Church > Liturgy > History > To 1500
• Catholic Church
• Scivias (Hildegard, Saint)
• To 1500
• Cosmology, Medieval
• Liturgy and the arts
• Liturgics

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages [323]-343) and indexes.

Call Number

JFF 23-154

ISBN

• 9781512823073
• 1512823074

LCCN

2022011659

OCLC

1347732982

Author

Fassler, Margot Elsbeth, author.

Title

Cosmos, liturgy, and the arts in the twelfth century : Hildegard's illuminated "Scivias" / Margot E. Fassler.

Publisher

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2023]

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Middle Ages series

Middle Ages series.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages [323]-343) and indexes.

Chronological Term

To 1500

Research Call Number

JFF 23-154