64 Schulze ⦁ Hildegard [Hildegard’s] protests of her ignorance (“since I am uneducated”) have been generally discounted by modern historians, for the internal evidence of her vast literary output suggests that she must have been well educated in patristic literature, biblical exegesis, philosophy, astrology, natural sciences, and music. She was well acquainted with the Latin Bible and she stated that she heard the divine voice speaking in Latin. Her medical books are so closely grounded in the theories of Galen that it is inconceivable that she did not have knowledge of his work. Her conventional reference to herself as an uneducated woman undoubtedly was designed to strengthen her claim to divine revelation.1 Hildegard’s copious works did not allow her to be disregarded, but did not alone give her a voice in the Catholic Church. Caroline Walker Bynum, professor emerita of Western Medieval History at the Institute for Advanced Study, comments, “No modern theorist would explain women’s religious options or opinions as biologically determined. [There were, however,] institutional and educational constraints not rooted in biology that were constant throughout the later Middle Ages.”2 The medieval church fathers considered women unfit for theological positions because they thought of women as weak and made in the image of man, not God. In agreement with the medieval church fathers, Hildegard wrote in Liber divinorum operum, The man and women were thus complementary, in that one works through the other. Man cannot be called “man” without the woman, in the same way as the woman cannot be called “woman” without the man. Woman is the work of man, and man the consolation of the woman. Neither can exist without the other. Man signifies the divinity of the Son of God, in the same way that the woman signifies his humanity.3 Hildegard’s perspective does not argue for the advancement of women’s role in society and the Church. Rather than viewing women as made in the image of God, along with men, Hildegard wrote that women are made in the image of man. Hildegard’s writings purport women are made in 1 Lerner, 53–54. 2 Bynum, 3. 3 McGrath, 355–356.
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