SAINT HILDEGARD OF BINGEN: 1098-1179

The discussion of macrocosm and microcosm, nous and hyle, by Bernard Silvester in the De mundi universitate is believed by Dr. Charles Singer, in a recent essay on “The Scientific Views and Visions of Saint Hildegard,” to have influenced her later writings, such as the Liber vitae meritorum and the Liber divinorum operum. He writes “The work of Bernard ... corresponds so closely both in form, in spirit, and sometimes even in phraseology to the Liber divinorum operum that it appears to us certain that Hildegard must have had access to it.”[338] Without subscribing unreservedly to this view, we pass on from the Platonist and geomancer of Tours to the Christian “sibyl of the Rhine.”[339]

From repeated statements in the prefaces to Hildegard’s works, in which she tells exactly when she wrote them and how old she was at the time,—for not only was she not reticent on this point but her different statements of her age at different times are all consistent with one another—it is evident that she was born in 1098. Her birthplace was near Sponheim. From the age of five, she tells us in the Scivias, she had been subject to visions which did not come to her in her sleep but in her wakeful hours, yet were not seen or heard with the eyes and ears of sense. During her lifetime she was also subject to frequent illness, and very likely there was some connection between her state of health and her susceptibility to visions. She spent her life from her eighth year in religious houses along the Nahe river, and in 1147 became head of a nunnery at its mouth opposite Bingen, the place with which her name was henceforth connected. She became famed for her cures of diseases as well as her visions and ascetic life, and it is Kaiser’s opinion that her medical skill contributed more to her popular reputation for saintliness than all her writings. At any rate she became very well known, and her prayers and predictions were much sought after. Thomas Becket, who seems to have been rather too inclined to pry into the future, as we shall see later, wrote asking for “the visions and oracles of that sainted and most celebrated Hildegard,” and inquiring whether any revelation had been vouchsafed her as to the duration of the existing papal schism. “For in the days of Pope Eugenius she predicted that not until his last days would he have peace and grace in the city.”[340] It is very doubtful whether St. Bernard visited her monastery and called the attention of Pope Eugenius III to her visions, but her letters[341] show her in correspondence with St. Bernard and several popes and emperors, with numerous archbishops and bishops, abbots and other potentates, to whom she did not hesitate to administer reproofs and warnings. For this purpose and to aid in the repression of heresy she also made tours from Bingen to various parts of Germany. There is some disagreement whether she died in 1179 or 1180.[342] Proceedings were instituted by the pope in 1233 to investigate her claims to sainthood, but she seems never to have been formally canonized. Gebenon, a Cistercian prior in Eberbach, made a compendium from her Scivias, Liber divinorum operum, and Letters, “because few can own or read her works.”[343]

As was stated above, we can date some of Hildegard’s works with exactness. In her preface to the one entitled Scivias[344] she says that in the year 1141, when she was forty-two years and seven months old, a voice from heaven bade her commit her visions to writing. She adds that she scarcely finished the book in ten years, so we infer that she was working at it from 1141 to 1150. This fits exactly with what she tells us in the preface to the Liber vitae meritorum, which she was divinely instructed to write in 1158, when she was sixty years old. Moreover, she says that the eight years preceding, that is from 1151 to 1158, had been spent in writing other treatises which also appear to have been revealed in visions and among which were “subtilitates diversarum naturarum creaturarum,” the title of another of her works with which we shall be concerned. On the Liber vitae meritorum she spent five years, so it should have been completed by 1163. In that year, the preface to the Liber divinorum operum informs us,—and the sixty-fifth year of her life—a voice instructed her to begin its composition, and seven more years were required to complete it. This leaves undated only one of the five works by her which we shall consider, namely, the Causae et curae, or Liber compositae medicinae as it is sometimes called, while the Subtilitates diversarum naturarum creaturarum bears a corresponding alternative title, Liber simplicis medicinae.

“Some would impugn the genuineness of all her writings,” says the article on Hildegard in The Catholic Encyclopedia, “but without sufficient reason.”[345] Kaiser, who edited the Causae et curae, had no doubt that both it and the Subtilitates were genuine works. Recently Singer has excluded them both from his discussion of Hildegard’s scientific views on the ground that they are probably spurious, but his arguments are unconvincing. His objection that they are full of German expressions which are absent in her other works is of little consequence, since it would be natural to employ vernacular proper names for homely herbs and local fish and birds and common ailments, while in works of an astronomical and theological character like her other visions there would be little reason for departing from the Latin. Anyway Hildegard’s own assertion in the preface of the Liber vitae meritorum is decisive that she wrote that work. The almost contemporary biography of her also states that she wrote “certain things concerning the nature of man and the elements, and of diverse creatures,”[346] which may be a blanket reference to the Causae et curae as well as the Subtilitates diversarum naturarum creaturarum. The records which we have of the proceedings instituted by the pope in 1233 to investigate Hildegard’s title to sainthood mention both the Liber simplicis medicinae and Liber compositae medicinae as her works; and later in the same century Matthew of Westminster ascribed both treatises to her, stating further that the Liber simplicis medicinae secundum creationem was in eight books and giving the full title of the other as Liber compositae medicinae de aegritudinum causis signis et curis.[347] Kaiser has pointed out a number of parallel passages in it and the Subtilitates, while its introductory cosmology seems to me very similar to that of Hildegard’s other three works. Indeed, as we consider the contents of these five works together, it will become evident that the same peculiar views and personality run through them all.

In the preface to the Liber vitae meritorum Hildegard speaks of a man and a girl who gave her some assistance in writing out her visions.[348] From such passages in her own works and from statements of her biographers and other writers[349] it has been inferred that she was untrained in Latin grammar and required literary assistance.[350] Or sometimes it is said that she miraculously became able to speak and write Latin without having ever been instructed in that language.[351] Certainly the Causae et curae is a lucid, condensed, and straightforward presentation which it would be very difficult to summarize or excerpt. One must read it all, for further condensation is impossible. One can hardly say as much for her other works, but a new critical edition of them such as the Causae et curae has enjoyed might result in an improvement of the style. But our concern is rather with their subject-matter.

Three of the five works which we shall consider are written out in the form of visions, and are primarily religious in their contents but contain considerable cosmology and some human anatomy, as well as some allusions to magic and astrology. The other two deal primarily with medicine and natural science, and give no internal indication of having been revealed in visions, presenting their material in somewhat didactic manner, and being divided into books and chapters, like other medieval treatises on the same subjects. As printed in Migne, the Subtleties of Different Natural Creatures or Book of Medicinal Simples is in nine books dealing respectively with plants, elements, trees, stones, fish, birds, animals, reptiles, and metals. In this arrangement there is no plan evident[352] and it would seem more logical to have the books on plants and trees and stones and metals together. In Schott’s edition of 1533 the discussion of stones was omitted—perhaps properly, since Matthew of Westminster spoke of but eight books—and the remaining topics were grouped in four books instead of eight as in Migne. First came the elements, then metals, then a third book treating of plants and trees, and a fourth book including all sorts of animals.[353] That the Subtleties was a widely read and influential work is indicated by the number of manuscripts of it listed by Schmelzeis and Kaiser. Of the five books of the Causae et curae the first, beginning with the creation of the universe, Hyle, the creation of the angels, fall of Lucifer, and so forth, deals chiefly with celestial phenomena and the waters of the sea and firmament. The second combines some discussion of Adam and Eve and the deluge with an account of the four elements and humors, human anatomy, and various other natural phenomena.[354] With book three the listing of cures begins and German words appear occasionally in the text.

So much attention to the Biblical story of creation and of Adam and Eve as is shown in the first two books of the Causae et curae might give one the impression that Hildegard’s natural science is highly colored by and entirely subordinated to a religious point of view. But this is not quite the impression that one should take away. A notable thing about even her religious visions is the essential conformity of their cosmology and physiology to the then prevalent theories of natural science. The theory of four elements, the hypothesis of concentric spheres surrounding the earth, the current notions concerning veins and humors, are introduced with slight variations in visions supposed to be of divine origin. In matters of detail Hildegard may make mistakes, or at least differ from the then more generally accepted view, and she displays no little originality in giving a new turn to some of the familiar concepts, as in her five powers of fire, four of air, fifteen of water, and seven of earth.[355] But she does not evolve any really new principles of nature. Possibly it is the spiritual application of these scientific verities that is regarded as the pith of the revelation, but Hildegard certainly says that she sees the natural facts in her visions. The hypotheses of past and contemporary natural science, somewhat obscured or distorted by the figurative and mystical mode of description proper to visions, are embodied in a saint’s reveries and utilized in inspired revelation. Science serves religion, it is true, but religion for its part does not hesitate to accept science.

We cannot take the time to note all of Hildegard’s minor variations from the natural science of her time, but may note one or two characteristic points in which her views concerning the universe and nature seem rather daring and unusual, not to say crude and erroneous. In the Scivias she represents a blast and lesser winds as emanating from each of four concentric heavens which she depicts as surrounding the earth, namely, a sphere of fire, a shadowy sphere like a skin, a heaven of pure ether, and a region of watery air under it.[356] In the Liber divinorum operum she speaks of winds which drive the firmament from east to west and the planets from west to east.[357] In the Subtilitates Hildegard seems to entertain the strange notion that rivers are sent forth from the sea like the blood in the veins of the human body.[358] One gets the impression that the rivers flow up-hill toward their sources, since one reads that “the Rhine is sent forth by the force of the sea”[359] and that “some rivers go forth from the sea impetuously, others slowly according to the winds.”

Since Hildegard lived on the Nahe or Rhine all her life she must indeed have been absorbed in her visions and monastic life not to have learned in which direction a river flows; and perhaps we should supply the explanation, which she certainly does not expressly give in the Subtilitates, that the sea feeds the rivers by evaporation or through subterranean passages. Perhaps a passage in the Causae et curae may be taken as a correction or explanation of the preceding assertions, in which case that work would seem to be of later date than the Subtilitates. In it too Hildegard states that “springs and rivers” which “flow from the sea” are better in the east than in the west, but her next sentence straightway adds that they are salt and leave a salt deposit on the sands where they flow which is medicinal.[360] The waters rising from the southern sea are also spoken of by her as salt.[361] Even in the Causae et curae she speaks of the water of the great sea which surrounds the world as forming a sort of flank to the waters above the firmament.[362]

On the subject of whether waters are wholesome to drink or not Hildegard comes a trifle nearer the truth and somewhat reminds us of the discussions of the same subject in Pliny and Vitruvius.[363] She says that swamp water should always be boiled,[364] that well water is better to drink than spring-water and spring-water than river water, which should be boiled and allowed to cool before drinking;[365] that rain-water is inferior to spring-water[366] and that drinking snow-water is dangerous to the health.[367] The salt waters of the west she regards as too turbid, while the fresh waters of the west are not warmed sufficiently by the sun and should be boiled and allowed to cool before using.[368] The salt waters arising from the south sea are venomous from the presence in them of worms and small animals. Southern fresh waters have been purged by the heat, but make the flesh of men fatty and of black color.[369] Hildegard is not the first author to advise the boiling of drinking-water,[370] but she certainly lays great stress on this point.

While the scheme of the universe put forward by ancient and medieval science is, as we have seen, on the whole adopted even in Hildegard’s most visionary writings, it is equally true that the religious interest is by no means absent from her two works of medicine and natural history. In the first place, the devil is a force in nature which she often mentions. Her opening the Causae et curae with a discussion of creation—of course a usual starting-point with the medieval scientist—soon leads her to speak of the fall of Lucifer. She has a rather good theory that Lucifer in his perverse will strove to raise himself to Nothing, and that since what he wished to do was Nothing, he fell into nothingness and could not stand because he could find no foundation under him.[371] But after the devil was unable to create anything out of nothing and fell from heaven, God created the firmament and sun, moon, and stars to show how great He was and to make the devil realize what glory he had lost.[372] Other creatures who willingly join themselves to the devil lose their own characteristics and become nothing.[373] Lucifer himself is not permitted to move from Tartarus or he would upset the elements and celestial bodies, but a throng of demons of varying individual strength plot with him against the universe.[374] But in other passages Hildegard seems to admit freely the influence, if not the complete presence, of the devil in nature. And he has the power of deceiving by assumed appearances, as Adam was seduced by the serpent.

Indeed, the dragon to this day hates mankind and has such a nature and such diabolical arts in itself that sometimes when it emits its fiery breath, the spirits of the air disturb the air.[375] This illustrates a common feature of Hildegard’s natural history and pharmacy; namely, the association of natural substances with evil spirits either in friendly or hostile relationships. In the preface to the first book of the Subtleties she states that some herbs cannot be endured by demons, while there are others of which the devil is fond and to which he joins himself. In mandragora, for example, “the influence of the devil is more present than in other herbs; consequently man is stimulated by it according to his desires, whether they be good or bad.”[376] On the other hand, the holm-oak is hostile to the spirits of the air; one who sleeps under its shade is free from diabolical illusions, and fumigating a house with it drives out the evil spirits.[377] Certain fish, too, have the property of expelling demons, whether one eats them or burns their livers or bones.[378] Finally, stones and metals have their relations to evil spirits. It is advisable for a woman in childbirth to hold the gem jasper in her hand, “in order that malignant spirits of the air may be the less able to harm her and her child; for the tongue of the ancient serpent extends itself towards the perspiration of the child, as it emerges from the mother’s womb.”[379] Not only does the touch of red-hot steel weaken the force of poison in food or drink, but that metal also signifies the divinity of God, and the devil flees from and avoids it.[380]

It is perhaps not very surprising that we should find in Hildegard’s works notions concerning nature which we met back in the Enoch literature, since some of her writings take the same form of recorded visions as Enoch’s, while one of them, the Liber vitae meritorum, is equally apocalyptic. At any rate, in the Scivias in the second vision, where Lucifer is cast out of glory because of his pride, the fallen angels are seen as a great multitude of stars, as in the Book of Enoch, and we are told that the four elements were in harmony before Lucifer’s fall.[381] The disturbing effect of sin, even human, upon nature is again stated in the Causae et curae, where it is said that normally the elements serve man quietly and perform his works. But when men engage in wars and give way to hate and envy, the elements are apt to rage until men repent and seek after God again.[382] In the Liber vitae meritorum, too, the elements complain that they are overturned and upset by human depravity and iniquity.[383]

The influence of the Christian religion is further shown and that of the Bible in particular is manifested by numerous allusions to Adam and the earliest period of Biblical history, but very few of them find any justification in the scriptural narrative. Thus the Liber divinorum operum states[384] that after the fall of Adam and before the deluge the sun and moon and planets and other stars were “somewhat turbulent from excessive heat,” and that the men of that time possessed great bodily strength in order that they might endure this heat. The deluge reduced the temperature and men since have been weaker. In the preface to the fifth book of the Subtleties we are told that there are certain plants which fish eat, and which, if man could procure and eat, would enable him to go without food for four or five months. Adam used to eat them at times after he had been cast out of Eden, but not when he could get enough other food, as they make the flesh tough. In the preface to the eighth book Hildegard says that all creatures were good before Adam’s fall, but when Abel’s blood stained the soil noxious humors arose from which venomous and deadly reptiles were generated. These perished in the deluge, but others were generated from their putrefying carcasses. In the Causae et curae, too, the names of Adam and Eve occasionally appear in the chapter headings, for instance, “Of Adam’s fall and of melancholy.”[385]

Hildegard also held the view, common among medieval Christian writers, that one purpose of the natural world about us is to illustrate the spiritual world and life to come, and that invisible and eternal truths may be manifested in visible and temporal objects. In the Scivias she hears a voice from heaven saying, “God who established all things by His will, created them to make His Name known and honored, not only moreover showing in the same what are visible and temporal, but also manifesting in them what are invisible and eternal.”[386] But neither Hildegard nor medieval Christians in general thought that the only purpose of natural phenomena and science was to illustrate spiritual truth and point a moral. But this always constituted a good excuse which sounded well when one of the clergy wished to investigate or write about things of nature. Not that we mean to question the sincerity of the medieval writers one whit more than that of certain “Christian colleges” of the present which deem it wise to demonstrate their piety and orthodoxy by maintaining compulsory chapel attendance and holding an occasional “Convocation.” But certainly our abbess of Bingen in the course of her writings, especially the Subtleties and Causae et curae, lists many natural phenomena and medical recipes without making any mention of what spiritual truth they may or may not illustrate.

Associating natural substances as much with the devil or spirits of the air as she does, it is not surprising that Hildegard believes in the reality of magic and has something to say about it. Magic is regarded by Hildegard as an evil and diabolical art. She describes it in a vision of the Scivias, where God Himself is represented as speaking, as the art of seeing and hearing the devil, which was taught to men by Satan himself.[387] Similarly in the Liber divinorum operum it is stated that Antichrist will excel “in all diabolical arts” and in “the magic art.”[388] This was of course the usual Christian view. In the Liber vitae meritorum with more apparent originality Magic or Maleficium is presented as one of the personified Vices and is allowed to speak for itself. It is represented as having the body of a dog, the head of a wolf, and the tail of a lion. This beast or image speaks in its own praise and defense as follows.

“Of Mercury and other philosophers I will say many things, who by their investigations harnessed the elements in such wise that they discovered most certainly everything that they wished. Those very daring and very wise men learned such things partly from God and partly from evil spirits. And why shouldn’t they? And they named the planets after themselves, since they had made many investigations and learned a great deal concerning the sun and moon and stars. I, moreover, rule and reign wherever I list in those arts, forsooth in the heavenly luminaries, in trees and herbs and all that grows in the earth, and in beasts and animals upon the earth, and in worms both above and below the earth. And on my marches who is there that resists me? God created all things, so in these arts I do Him no injury. For He wishes it, as is proved in His scriptures and perfect works. And what would be the advantage, if His works were so blind that no cause could be studied in them? There wouldn’t be any.”[389]

To this bold attempt of Magic to identify itself with scientific investigation, the True Worship of God responds with the counter question, “Whether it is more pleasing to God to adore Him or His works?” and reminds Maleficium that mere creatures which proceed from God can give life to no one and that man is the only rational created being. “You, moreover, O Magic Art, have the circle without the center, and while you investigate many problems in the circle of creation ... you have robbed God of His very name.” This reply does not seem to separate magic and scientific investigation or to deny Magic’s claim that they are identical, and its force would seem about as cogent against science as against magic. But a little later in the same work Hildegard reverts to her former charge that maleficium is “by diabolical arts,” and that its devotees “by directing all their works to impurity turn their science also to the pursuit of evils.” “For they name demons as their gods and worship them instead of God.”[390]

That magic, however diabolical it may be, does employ natural forces and substances, is not only asserted by Magic Art itself, but freely admitted by Hildegard in her discussions of the properties of animals, plants, and minerals in her other two works, the Subtleties of Diverse Creatures and Cases and Cures. In the latter work she states that while herbs in the east are full of virtue and have a good odor and medicinal properties, those in the west are potent in the magic art and for other phantasms but do not contribute much to the health of the human body.[391] In the former work she tells that the tree-toad is much employed in diabolical arts, especially when the trees are beginning to leaf and blossom, since at this time the spirits of the air are especially active.[392] Sometimes, however, there is a way to remove this magic virtue from a natural substance. The root mandragora “is no longer efficacious for magic and fantastic purposes,” if it is purified in a fountain for a day and a night immediately after it has been dug from the earth.[393]

There are also substances which counteract magic. It has little force in any place where a fir-tree grows, for the spirits of the air hate and avoid such spots.[394] In the Causae et curae Hildegard tells how to compound a powder “against poison and against magic words.”[395] It also “confers health and courage and prosperity on him who carries it with him.” First one takes a root of geranium (storkesnabil) with its leaves, two mallow plants, and seven shoots of the plantagenet. These must be plucked at midday in the middle of April. Then they are to be laid on moist earth and sprinkled with water to keep them green for a while. Next they are dried in the setting sun and in the rising sun until the third hour, when they should once more be laid on moist earth and sprinkled with water until noon. Then they are to be removed and placed facing the south in the full sunshine until the ninth hour, when they should be wrapped in a cloth, with a stick on top to hold them in place, until a trifle before midnight. Then the night begins to incline towards day and all the evils of darkness and night begin to flee. A little before midnight, therefore, they should be transferred to a high window or placed above a door or in some garden where the cool air may have access to them. As soon as midnight is passed, they are to be removed once more, pulverized with the middle finger, and put in a new pill-box with a little bisemum to keep them from decaying but not a sufficient quantity to overcome the scent of the herbs. A little of this powder may be applied daily to the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, or it may be bound on the body as an antiaphrodisiac, or it may be held over wine without touching it but so that its odor can reach the wine, which should then be drunk with a bit of saffron as a preventive of indigestion, poison, magic, and so forth.

In the Subtilitates[396] the following procedure is recommended, if anyone is bewitched by phantasms or magic words so that he goes mad. Take a wheaten loaf and cut the upper crust in the form of a cross. First draw a jacinth through one line of the cross, saying, “May God who cast away all the preciousness of gems from the devil when he transgressed His precept, remove from you N. all phantasms and magic words and free you from the ill of this madness.” Then the jacinth is to be drawn through the other arm of the cross and this formula is to be repeated, “As the splendor which the devil once possessed departed from him because of his transgression, so may this madness which harasses N. by varied phantasies and magic arts be removed from you and depart from you.” The ceremony is then completed by the bewitched person eating the bread around the cross.

These two illustrations make it apparent that Hildegard has a licit magic of her own which is every whit as superstitious as the magic art which she condemns. It is evident that she accepts not only marvelous and occult virtues of natural substances such as herbs and gems, but also the power of words and incantations, and rites and ceremonies of a most decidedly magical character. In the second passage this procedure assumed a Christian character, but the plucking and drying of the herbs in the first passage perhaps preserves the flavor of primitive Teutonic or Celtic paganism. Nor is such superstitious procedure resorted to merely against magic, to whose operations it forms a sort of homeopathic counterpart. It is also employed for ordinary medicinal purposes, and is a characteristic feature of Hildegard’s conception of nature and whole mental attitude. This we may further illustrate by running through the books of the Subtilitates.

Except for passages connecting the devil with certain herbs which we have already noted, Hildegard’s discussion of vegetation is for the most part limited to medicinal properties of herbs, which are effective without the addition of fantastic ceremonial. Sometimes nevertheless the herbs are either prepared or administered in a rather bizarre fashion. Insanity may be alleviated, we are told, by shaving the patient’s head and washing it in the hot water in which agrimonia has been boiled, while the hot herbs themselves are bound in a cloth first over his heart and then upon his forehead and temples.[397] An unguent beneficial alike for digestive and mental disorders is made of the bark, leaves, and bits of the green wood of the fir-tree, combined with saliva to half their weight. This mess is to be boiled in water until it becomes thick, then butter is to be added, and the whole strained through a cloth.[398] The mandragora root should first be worn bound between the breast and navel for three days and three nights, then divided in halves and these bound on the thighs for three days and three nights. Finally the left half of the root, which resembles the human figure, should be pulverized, camphor added to it, and eaten.[399] If a man is always sad and in the dumps, after purifying the mandragora root in a fountain, let him take it to bed with him, hold it so that it will be warmed by the heat of his body, and say, “God, who madest man from the dust of the earth without grief, I now place next me that earth which has never transgressed”—Hildegard has already stated that the mandragora is composed “of that earth of which Adam was created”—“in order that my clay may feel that peace just as Thou didst create it.” That the prayer or incantation is more essential than the virtue of the mandragora in this operation, is indicated by the statement that shoots of beech, cedar, or aspen may be used instead of the mandragora.

Other marvelous effects than routing the devil, which Hildegard attributes to gems in the course of the fourth book of the Subtilitates, are to confer intellect and science for the day, to banish anger and dulness, bestow an equable temper, restrain lust, cure all sorts of diseases and infirmities, endow with the gift of sound speech, prevent thefts at night, and enable one to fast. These marvelous results are produced either by merely having the stone in one’s possession, or by holding it in the hand, placing it next the skin, taking it to bed with one and warming it by the heat of the body, breathing on it, holding it in the mouth especially when fasting, suspending it about the neck, or making the sign of the cross with it. In the cure of insanity by use of the magnet the stone should be moistened with the patient’s saliva and drawn across his forehead while an incantation is repeated.[400] A man may be brought out of an epileptic fit by putting an emerald in his mouth.[401] Having recovered, he should remove the gem from his mouth and say, “As the spirit of the Lord filled the earth, so may His grace fill the temple of my body that it may never be moved.” This ceremony is to be repeated on nine successive mornings, and that here the gem is as important as the prayer is indicated by the direction that the patient should have the gem with him each time and take it out and look at it as he repeats the incantation. Different is the procedure for curing epilepsy by means of the gem achates.[402] In this case the stone should be soaked in water for three days at the full moon; this water should be slightly warmed, and then preserved, and all the patient’s food cooked in it dum luna tota crescat. The gem should also be placed in everything that he drinks. This astrological procedure is to be repeated for ten months.

We have already heard that certain fish have the property of expelling demons. Fish also have other remarkable virtues. The eye of a copprea, worn in a gold or silver ring so that it touches one’s finger, arouses a sluggish intellect.[403] The lung of a tunny fish, taken in water, is good for a fever, and it keeps one in good health to wear shoes and a belt made of its skin.[404] Pulverized salmon bones are recommended for bad teeth.[405] But eating the head of a barbo gives one a headache and fever.[406] Hildegard also tells some wonderful stories concerning the modes of generation of different varieties of fish. In the Causae et curae[407] for dimness of the eyes it is recommended to dry some walrus skin in the sun, soften it in pure wine, and apply it in a cloth between the eyes at night. It should be removed at midnight and applied only on alternate nights for a week. “Either it will remove dimness of the eyes, or God does not permit this to be done.”