To render available or to enhance the occult virtues of birds Hildegard suggests a great amount of complicated ceremonial. The heart of a vulture, split in two, dried before a slow fire and in the sun, and worn sewn up in a belt of doeskin, makes one tremble in the presence of poison.[408] This is explained by the vulture’s own antipathy to poison, which is increased and purified by the fire, sun, and especially by the belt, for the doe is swifter and more sensitive than other animals. Mistiness is marvelously removed from the eyes by catching a nightingale before day-break, adding a single drop of dew found on clean grass to its gall, and anointing the eyebrows and lashes frequently with the same.[409] Another eye-cure consists in cooking a heron’s head in water, removing its eyes, alternately drying them in the sun and softening them in cold water for three successive times, pulverizing and dissolving them in wine, and at night frequently touching the eyes and lids with the tip of a feather dipped in this concoction.[410] The blood of a crane, dried and preserved, and its right foot are employed in varied ways to facilitate child-birth.[411] Hildegard also often tells how to make a medicinal unguent by cooking some bird in some prescribed manner and then pulverizing certain portions of the carcass with various herbs or other animal substances.[412] Even without the employment of ceremonial sufficiently remarkable powers are attributed to the bodies or parts of birds. Eating the flesh of one reduces fat and benefits epileptics, while eating its liver is good for melancholy.[413] The liver of a swan has the different property of purifying the lungs, while the lung of a swan is a cure for the spleen.[414] Again, a heron’s liver cures stomach trouble, while a cure for spleen is to drink water in which its bones have been stewed, and if one who is sad eats its heart, it will make him glad.[415]

Hildegard’s chapters on quadrupeds are so delightfully quaint that I cannot pass them over, although the properties which she attributes to them and the methods by which their virtues are utilized are not essentially different from those in examples already given. The camel, however, is peculiar in that its different humps have quite different virtues.[416] The one next to its neck has the virtues of the lion; the second, those of the leopard; the third, those of the horse. A cap of lion’s skin cures ailments of the head whether physical or mental.[417] Deafness may be remedied by cutting off a lion’s right ear and holding it over the patient’s ear just long enough to warm it and to say, “Hear adimacus by the living God and the keen virtue of a lion’s hearing.” This process is to be repeated many times. The heart of a lion is somewhat similarly employed, but without any incantation, to make a stupid person prudent. Burying a lion’s heart in the house is regarded as fire insurance against its being struck by lightning, “for the lion is accustomed to roar when he hears thunder.” Digestion is aided by drinking water in which the dried liver of a lion has been left for a short time. Placing a bit of the skin from between a bear’s eyes over one’s heart removes timidity and anxiety.[418] If anyone suffers from paralysis or one of those changeable diseases which wax and wane with the moon like lunacy, let him select a spot where an ass has been slain, or has died a natural death, or has wallowed, and let him spread a cloth on the grass or ground and repose there a short time and sleep if he can. Afterwards you should take him by the right hand and say, “Lazarus slept and rested and rose again; and as Christ roused him from foul decay, so may you rise from this perilous pestilence and the changing phases of fever in that conjunction in which Christ applied Himself to the alleviation of such complaints, prefiguring that He would redeem man from his sins and raise him from the dead.” With a brief interval of time allowed between, the same performance is to be repeated thrice in the same place on the same day, and then again thrice on the next and the third days, when the patient will be cured.[419]

The liver and skin of the unicorn have great medicinal virtues, but that animal can never be caught except by means of girls, for it flees from men but stops to gaze diligently at girls, because it marvels that they have human forms, yet no beards. “And if there are two or three girls together, it marvels so much the more and is the more quickly captured while its eyes are fixed on them. Moreover, the girls employed in capturing it should be of noble, not peasant birth, and of the middle period of adolescence.”[420] When one weasel is sick, another digs up a certain herb and breathes and urinates on it for an hour, and then brings it to the sick weasel who is cured by it.[421] But what this herb is is unknown to men and other animals, and it would do them no good if they did know it, since its unaided virtue is not efficacious, nor would the action of their breath or urine make it so. But the heart of a weasel, dried and placed with wax in the ear, benefits headache or deafness, and the head of a weasel, worn in two pieces in a belt next the skin, strengthens and comforts the bearer and keeps him from harm. The mouse, besides being responsible for two other equally marvelous cures, is a remedy for epilepsy. “For inasmuch as the mouse runs away from everything, therefore it drives away the falling disease.”[422] It should be put in a dish of water, and the patient should drink some of this water and also wash his feet and forehead in it.

Hildegard gives some strange advice what animal products to eat and wear. “Sheepskins are good for human wear, because they do not induce pride or lust or pestilence as the skins of certain other animals do.”[423] Pork is not good for either sick or healthy persons to eat, in her opinion, while beef, on account of its intrinsic cold, is not good for a man of cold constitution to eat.[424] On the other hand, she recommends as edible various birds which would strike the modern reader as disgusting.[425]

Fleas remain underground in winter but come forth to plague mankind when the sun dries the soil in summer. But one may be rid of them by heating some earth until it is quite dry and then scattering it upon the bed.[426] Hildegard also describes a complicated cure for leprosy by use of the earth from an ant-hill.[427] If a man kills a certain venomous snake just after it has skinned itself in the cleft of a rock, and cautiously removes its heart and dries the same in the sun, and then preserves it in a thin metal cover, it will serve as an amulet. Holding it in his hand will render him immune to venom and cheer him up if he becomes gloomy or sorrowful.[428]

In the Causae et curae Hildegard combines the virtues of parts of a number of animals into one composite medicine for epilepsy.[429] Four parts of dried mole’s blood are used because the mole sometimes shows himself and sometimes hides, like the epilepsy itself. Two parts of powdered duck’s bill are added because the duck’s strength is in its beak, “and because it touches both pure and impure things with its bill, it is repugnant to this disease which is sudden and silent.” One portion of the powdered claws of a goose, minus the skin and flesh, is added for much the same reason, and the claw of a goose rather than a gander is required because the female bird is the more silent of the two. These constituents are bound together in a cloth, placed for three days near a recent molecast,—for such earth is more wholesome, then are put near ice to cool and then in the sun to dry. Cakes are then to be made with this powder and the livers of some edible animal and bird and a little meal and cummin seed, and eaten for five days. Against diabolical phantasms is recommended a belt made of the skin of a roebuck, which is a pure animal, and of the skin of the helun, which is a brave beast, and hence both are abhorred by evil spirits.[430] The two strips of skin are to be fastened together by four little steel[431] nails, and as each is clasped one repeats the formula, “In the most potent strength of almighty God I adjure you to safeguard me”; only in the second, third, and fourth instance instead of saying “I adjure” (adiuro), the words benedico, constituo, and confirmo are respectively substituted. One should be girded with this belt night and day, and magic words will not harm one.

We have already encountered more than one instance of observance of the phases of the moon in Hildegard’s medicinal and magical procedure, and have met in one of her formulae a hint that Christ employed astrological election of a favorable conjunction in performing His miracles. Thus as usual the influence of the stars is difficult to separate from other occult virtues of natural substances, and we may complete our survey of Hildegard’s writings by considering her views concerning the celestial bodies and divination of the future.

In the passage of the Scivias to which we have already referred God condemned astrology and divination as well as magic.[432] Mathematici are called “deadly instructors and followers of the Gentiles in unbelief,” and man is reproved for believing that the stars allot his years of life and regulate all human actions, and for cultivating in the place of his Creator mere creatures such as the stars and heavens, which cannot console or help him, or confer either prosperity or happiness. Man should not consult the stars as to the length of his life, which he can neither know beforehand nor alter. He should not seek signs of the future in either stars or fire or birds or any other creature. “The error of augury” is expressly rebuked. Man should abstain not only from worshiping or invoking the devil but from making any inquiries from him, “since if you wish to know more than you should, you will be deceived by the old seducer.”

It is true that sometimes by divine permission the stars are signs to men, for the Son of God Himself says in the Gospel by Luke that “There shall be signs in the sun and moon and stars,” and His incarnation was revealed by a star. But it is a stupid popular error to suppose that other men each have a star of their own, and, continues God, speaking through the medium of Hildegard, “That star brought no aid to My Son other than that it faithfully announced His incarnation to the people, since all stars and creatures fear Me and simply fulfill My dictates and have no signification of anything in any creature.” This last observation receives further interpretation in a passage of the Causae et Curae[433] which explains that the stars sometimes show many signs, but not of the future or hidden thoughts of men, but of matters which they have already revealed by act of will or voice or deed, so that the air has received an impression of it which the stars can reflect back to other men if God allows it. But the sun and moon and planets do not always thus portray the works of men, but only rarely, and in the case of some great event affecting the public welfare.

If the stars do not even signify the fate and future of man, they are none the less potent forces and, under God, causes in the world of nature. “God who created all things,” writes Hildegard in the Liber divinorum operum,[434] “so constituted superiors that He also strengthens and purifies things below through these, and in the human form introduces also those things allotted for the soul’s salvation.” This passage has two sides; it affirms the rule of superiors over inferiors, but it makes special provision for the salvation of the human soul. And thus it is a good brief summary of Hildegard’s position. Sun, moon, and stars are represented as by the will of God cooperating with the winds—which play an important part in Hildegard’s cosmology—in driving the elements to and fro;[435] and the humors in the human body now rage fiercely like the leopard, now move sluggishly like the crab, now proceed in other ways analogous to the wolf or deer or bear or serpent or lamb or lion—animals whose heads, belching forth winds, are seen in the vision about the rim of the heavenly spheres.[436] They suggest the influence of the signs of the zodiac, although there appears to be no exact correspondence to these in Hildegard’s visionary scheme of the universe as detailed in the Liber divinorum operum. In the Causae et curae, on the other hand, she gives a detailed account of how pairs or triplets of planets accompany the sun through each of the twelve signs.[437] In other passages[438] she affirms that the sun and moon serve man by divine order, and bring him strength or weakness according to the temper of the air.

Hildegard more especially emphasizes the influence of the moon, in which respect she resembles many an astrologer. In the Causae et curae[439] she states that some days of the moon are good, others bad; some, useful and others, useless; some, strong and others, weak. “And since the moon has this changeability in itself, therefore the moisture in man has its vicissitudes and mutability in pain, in labor, in wisdom, and in prosperity.” Similarly in the Liber divinorum operum[440] it is noted that human blood and brain are augmented when the moon is full and diminish as it wanes, and that these changes affect human health variously. Sometimes one incurs epilepsy when the moon is in eclipse.[441] The moon is the mother of all seasons. Hildegard marvels in the Causae et curae[442] that while men have sense enough not to sow crops in mid-summer or the coldest part of winter, they persist in begetting offspring at any time according to their pleasure without regard either to the proper period of their own lives or to the time of the moon. The natural consequence of their heedlessness is the birth of defective children. Hildegard then adds[443] by way of qualification that the time of the moon does not dominate the nature of man as if it were his god, or as if man received any power of nature from it, or as if it conferred any part of human nature. The moon simply affects the air, and the air affects man’s blood and the humors of his body.

Hildegard, however, not only believed that as the humors were perturbed and the veins boiled, the health of the body would be affected and perhaps a fever set in,[444] but also that passions, such as wrath and petulance, were thereby aroused and the mind affected.[445] This is suggested in a general way in the Liber divinorum operum, but is brought out in more detail in the Causae et curae, where various types of men are delineated according to the combinations of humors in their bodies, and their characters are sketched and even their fate to some extent predicted therefrom. In one case[446] “the man will be a good scholar, but headlong and too vehement in his studies, so that he scatters his knowledge over too wide a field, as straw is blown by the wind; and he seeks to have dominion over others. In body he is healthy except that his legs are weak and he is prone to gout; but he can live a long while, if it so please God.” Such a passage hardly sounds consistent with Hildegard’s statement elsewhere already noted that man cannot know the length of his life beforehand. In the case of choleric, sanguine, melancholy, and phlegmatic men[447] Hildegard states what the relations of each type will be with women and even to some extent what sort of children they will have. She also discusses four types of women in very similar style.[448] These are not exactly astrological predictions, but they have much the same flavor and seem to leave little place for freedom of the will.

In one passage, however, Hildegard comfortingly adds that nevertheless the Holy Spirit can penetrate the whole nature of man and overcome his mutable nature as the sun dispels clouds, and so counteract the moist influence of the moon. She also states concerning the significations of the stars concerning man’s future, “These significations are not produced by the virtue of the planets themselves alone or stars or clouds, but by the permission and will and decree of God, according as God wished to demonstrate to men the works of the same, just as a coin shows the image of its lord.”[449] In another passage, on the other hand, Hildegard recognizes, like Aquinas later, that it is only rarely and with difficulty that the flesh can be restrained from sinning.[450]

Finally, the Causae et curae close with predictions for each day of the moon of the type of male or female who will be conceived on that day.[451] Selecting the eighteenth day by lot as an example of the others, we read that a male conceived then will be a thief and will be caught in the act and will be deprived of his landed property so that he possesses neither fields nor vineyards, but strives to take from others what is not his. He will be healthy in body and live a long life, if left to himself. A woman conceived on that day will be cunning and deceitful of speech and will lead upright men to death if she can. She too will be sound of body and naturally long-lived, but sometimes insane. Hildegard then seems to feel it advisable to add, “But such morals, both in men and in women, are hateful to God.”

The theory of macrocosm and microcosm had a considerable attraction for Hildegard. At the beginning of the Causae et curae she exclaims, “O man, look at man! For man has in himself heavens and earth ... and in him all things are latent.”[452] Presently she compares the firmament to man’s head, sun, moon, and stars to the eyes, air to hearing, the winds to smelling, dew to taste, and “the sides of the world” to the arms and sense of touch. The earth is like the heart, and other creatures in the world are like the belly.[453] In the Liber divinorum operum she goes into further detail. Between the divine image in human form which she sees in her visions and the wheel or sphere of the universe she notes such relationships as these. The sun spreads its rays from the brain to the heel, and the moon directs its rays from the eyebrows to the ankles.[454] Elsewhere she says, “The eyebrows of man declare the journeyings of the moon, namely, the one route by which it approaches the sun in order to restore itself, and the other by which it recedes after it has been burnt by the sun.”[455] Again, from the top of the cerebral cavity to “the last extremity of the forehead” there are seven distinct and equal spaces, by which are signified the seven planets which are equidistant from one another in the firmament.[456] An even more surprising assumption as to astronomical distances is involved in the comparison[457] that as the three intervals between the top of the human head and the end of the throat and the navel and the groin are all equal, so are the spaces intervening between the highest firmament and lowest clouds and the earth’s surface and center. Corresponding to these intervals Hildegard notes three ages of man, infancy, adolescence, and old age. One more passage may be noted, since it also involves a similar explanation of weeping for joy to that given by Adelard of Bath. As the heart is stirred by emotion, whether of joy or of sorrow, humors are excited in the lungs and breast which rise to the brain and are emitted through the eyes in the form of tears. And in like manner, when the moon begins to wax or wane, the firmament is disturbed by winds which raise fogs from the sea and other waters.[458]

If Hildegard resorts to a magic of her own in order to counteract the diabolical arts, and if she accepts a certain amount of astrological doctrine for all her censure of it, it is not surprising to find her in the Causae et curae saying a word in favor of natural divination in dreams despite her rejection of augury and such arts. She believes that, when God sent sleep to Adam before he had yet sinned, his soul saw many things in true prophecy, and that the human soul may still sometimes do the same, although too often it is clouded by diabolical illusions.[459] But when the body is in a temperate condition and the marrow warmed in due measure, and there is no disturbance of vices or contrariety of morals, then very often a sleeper sees true dreams.[460] Hildegard’s own visions, as we have seen, came to her in her waking hours.