Manuscripts and Editions
Scivias survives in ten medieval manuscripts, two of them lost in modern times. The most esteemed of these was the well-preserved Rupertsberg manuscript, prepared under her immediate supervision or that of her immediate tradition, being made around the time of her death. It resided in the Wiesbaden Hessische Landesbibliothek until World War II, when it was taken to Dresden for safekeeping, and lost. Some hoped that the German reunification in 1990 would cause it to reappear, but to date it has not. Only black-and-white photographs of this manuscript survive. The original manuscript was 12.8 by 9.25 inches, and in 235 parchment pages with double columns. A faithful illuminated copy was made at the Hildegard Abbey in Eibingen in 1927-1933, which is the source of the color reproductions now available. Other copies are in the Biblioteca Vaticana (made in Rupertsberg), Heidelberg (12th century), Oxford (12 or 13th century), Trier (1487), and elsewhere.
The first modern edition of Scivias, translated into German, was published in 1928 by Sister Maura Böckeler of the Hildegard Abbey. A critical edition was completed in 1978 by Adelgundis Führkötter and Angela Carlevaris of the Hildegard Abbey. Of her books, it is the one most widely available to modern audiences in translations, sometimes abridged.
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“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
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