It is chiefly for memorable visions like these that Hildegard is remembered. He rejects all forms of continence and indulges his own lusts until, in Hildegard’s most striking image, he rapes Ecclesia, the female personification of the church itself, who is ultimately redeemed by her true bridegroom, Christ, as Antichrist is struck down by God’s thunderbolt. Opposed by God’s two “witnesses,” Enoch and Elijah, the Antichrist ultimately succeeds in destroying them. These are followed by the coming of Antichrist, pictured as a parodic mirror image of Christ: the Antichrist is born of a whore who pretends to be a virgin, and is possessed by the devil from his birth.He preaches and converts many through false miracles, and he disseminates false scriptures. The beasts come from the north, the realm of Satan. This vision first depicts five beasts (a dog, wolf, lion, pig, and horse) symbolizing five evil ages to come. In her own time,Hildegard was best known for her apocalyptic visions, in particular the 11th vision of book 3 of the Scivias, on the last days and the fall of Antichrist. At first she balks at the thought, believing herself to be unworthy, but when she is struck down by illness, she obeys the divine directive and spends the next 10 years composing her Scivias. In a preface to the Scivias, Hildegard describes a vision she had at the age of 42, in which she is commanded by heaven to write down the instruction she has received through her many visionary experiences, to share it with others-both her own nuns and the wider church-so that they, too, could experience the understanding she has gained. Both the vision and its explanation are concluded with a kind of formulaic sentence that is different for each of the three books and acts as a kind of refrain. These explanations may be only a few chapters long, but may extend to more than a hundred for the more complicated visions, and are often supported by direct references to Scripture. For each revelation, Hildegard first describes what she has seen, and then explains the vision in words that she portrays as coming to her through a voice from heaven. It is a lengthy text of some 150,000 words, divided into three main sections or books, the first containing six visions, the second (twice the length of the first) containing seven, and the last (as long as the first and second combined) containing 13 visions. The Scivias (a contraction, presumably, of Sci vias Domini, or “Know the ways of the Lord”) is the best-known work of the 12th-century abbess,mystic visionary, composer, prophetess, and preacher Hildegard von Bingen.Written in Latin over a 10-year period, the Scivias records a series of Hildegard’s visions concerning God and Creation, the Fall of man and his Redemption, and the end of the world.

Hildegard of bingen scivias pdf