Scivias - Writing Process

Writing Process

According to Hildegard herself in the preface to the Scivias, in 1141 (when she was 42) God in a vision ordered her to share her religious visions. At this time she had been the superior of the women's community at Disibodenberg for five years. She had been experiencing such visions from the age of five, but had only confided in the monk Volmar and her deceased superior Jutta. She felt insecure about her writing, out of humility or fear, and when she became ill, which she believed was punishment from God for her hesitancy. Volmar insisted that she write her visions down, and he and one of her nuns, Richardis von Stade, assisted in the writing of the work. She received permission to write the work from the Abbot Kuno at Disibodenberg. She also wrote Bernard of Clairvaux in 1146 for advice, and he suggested the visions were indeed from God, and demurred to interfere with His orders. Perhaps the length of time it took her to decide to write the visions, despite punishment from God and the encouragement of other religious figures, indicates how frightening she found them.

A delegation from Disinbodenberg took a copy of some writings she had made to the Synod of Trier (November 1147 – February 1148), and they were read aloud at the synod. Pope Eugene III granted papal approval to the writings, and authorized Hildegard to publish everything she received in visions. It is unclear whether the illustrations that accompany the text were shown at Trier. In 1148, she received a vision that called her to move her convent to Rupertsberg. She moved there in 1150, and soon afterward completed Scivias (in 1151 or 1152).

It is unclear what her role was in the illumination of the manuscript, and scholars have assigned her every role from being uninvolved, to directing others to create them, to being their direct creator. In an illustration included as a frontispiece, Hildegard is shown sketching on a wax tablet while dictating a vision to Volmar. According to Madeline Caviness, she may have sketched the outlines of her visions at their time, perhaps dictating their content simultaneously, and they were subsequently detailed.