Hildegard of Bingen, Visionary Exegete and Preacher

FAIN: FB-52317-06

Beverly Mayne Kienzle
President and Fellows of Harvard College (Cambridge, MA 02138-3800)

Over the past two decades studies on Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) have focused primarily on her visionary works, whereas what makes her genuinely unique among medieval women is her systematic exegesis. Hildegard composed fifty-eight "Expositiones evangeliorum," commentaries on the Gospels preached to her sisters. The proposed project constitutes the first comprehensive study of the "Expositiones: Fortifications of the Word: Hildegard of Bingen as Exegete and Preacher," and demonstrates the centrality of biblical interpretation to all Hildegard’s writings—a crucial factor for understanding her work, her relationship to her age, and her importance to the history of humanistic scholarship.

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