Non-Actionable Puffery

I saw here that someone nominated "12th Century German Monastics RPF" for Yuletide, and that inspired me to dust off something I wrote a few years back on Hildegard von Bingen's epic personal conlang:

Over the past two centuries, explanations offered for the origin and function of Hildegard's enigmatic constructed language, the Lingua Ignota, have ranged from glossolalia to cryptography. However, comparatively little attention has been paid to the pseudo-etymological relationships among words in the Lingua Ignota. This network of relationships reflects aspects of Hildegard's worldview as revealed through her visions and reinforces the suitability of the Lingua Ignota as a language for religious praise.

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Background on the Lingua Ignota

The Lingua Ignota, or Unknown Language, is a collection of just over one thousand words belonging to no natural language and created by Hildegard of Bingen. The bulk of the Lingua Ignota is transmitted in a glossary that is found in its most complete form in the Riesencodex[1] (henceforth R) and the Berlin manuscript or Codex Cheltenhamensis[2] (henceforth B). This glossary consists of words of the Lingua Ignota accompanied by glosses in Latin, German, or both. The German glosses display what Wilhelm Grimm characterized as a vacillating low German influence, a vacillation that occurs in both the R and B texts, although occasionally in different ways.[3] For this reason, it is not possible to characterize either R or B as "high" or "low" in comparison with the other. All of the words in this glossary are nouns.

There is some uncertainty regarding the transmission history of the glossary. Many scholars believe that the B scribe worked from an unknown exemplar, and not from R, based on the inclusion of the word magriz, which is not found in R, and on the divergent order of eight terms, and resulting confusion of two glosses, in a selection of words referring to insects.[4] However, magriz, being unglossed, can be accounted for as a misspelling which the scribe failed to cross out, and the B scribe repeats what appears to be an error in R, the omission of an expected z at the end of pazimbu[z], suggesting that B is in fact a descendant of R.[5] The question of the relationship of these two manuscripts therefore remains open.

Words of the Lingua Ignota are found in only one extant text besides this glossary: the praise song "O orzchis Ecclesia." "O orzchis Ecclesia" is a macaronic text written primarily in Latin but incorporating five words from the Lingua Ignota. Of those five, one (loifolum) is generally agreed to be a variant of a word appearing in the glossary, but most scholars do not find correspondences to the other four in the glossary. This suggests either that the lexicon of the Lingua Ignota was larger than that contained in the glossary or that Hildegard created these words on the spot, as they were needed. "O orzchis Ecclesia" appears twice in R and once in the Theologische Sammelhandschrift.[6] The words of the Lingua Ignota are glossed in Latin once in R[7] and in the Codex Theologische. The text of "O orzchis Ecclesia" is as follows, with glosses placed in brackets immediately following the words of the Lingua Ignota and accompanied by my translation:

O orzchis [immensa] Ecclesia / O immense Church
armis divinis precincta / girt with divine weapons[8]
et iazinto ornata / and decorated with hyacinth[9]
stigmatum loifolum [populorum[10]] / of the wounds of the peoples
et urbs scientiarum. / and you are the city of knowledge.
O, o, tu es etiam crizanta [uncta[11]] / O, o, you are also anointed
in alto sono et es chorzta [choruscans] gemma. / in lofty sound, and you are a glittering jewel.

Loifolum is generally agreed to be a form of loiffol, the forty-fifth entry in the glossary, glossed there as "populus", with the addition of the Latin third-declension genitive plural ending -um. Sarah Higley suggests further correspondences between crizanta, "anointed", and crizia, "church", and between orzchis, "immense", and orschibuz, "oak tree".[12] This leads to an interpretation of orschibuz as a compound, orschi- "great" + -buz "tree" or "bush" – an interpretation that fits well with the predominance of the -buz ending in words referring to trees and bushes in the glossary.

Existing Theories

Scholars have proposed many theories for the origins of the Lingua Ignota. One such theory, which enjoyed its greatest popularity in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, is that the Lingua Ignota is a record of Hildegard's glossolalia. Glossolalia is one of two phenomena broadly referred to as "speaking in tongues"; the other is xenoglossia. While xenoglossia refers to a phenomenon in which individuals are able to speak in natural languages unknown to them, glossolalia is a phenomenon in which individuals produce sounds in patterns that correspond to no natural language. Glossolalia is associated with ecstatic forms of spiritual practice. The restricted sound set and preference for certain letters, particularly z, that characterize the Lingua Ignota have led scholars to propose that the Lingua Ignota was produced as a record of glossolalia.[13]

However, the glossolalia explanation is untenable for a number of reasons. First, Hildegard was not known for any other ecstatic phenomena, and glossolalia is not listed among her miracles in her canonization reports.[14] Second, in comparing Hildegard's reports of her own visions with those of her contemporary, Elisabeth of Schönau, it becomes clear that Hildegard did not experience during her visions the alienatio mentis, the loss of conscious control over one's faculties, that Alphandéry characterizes as a necessary condition for ecstatic phenomena such as glossolalia.[15] In contrast with Elisabeth's trance-states, Hildegard's visions are not accompanied by a loss or distortion of her connection with her body or her physical senses; they are entirely internal phenomena, which she describes as taking place within her soul.[16] She retains full conscious control of her faculties during her visions, making glossolalia improbable. Third, the etymological or pseudo-etymological relationships among words in the Lingua Ignota weigh heavily against the theory that the Lingua Ignota arose as a record of glossolalia. Words in different sections of the glossary frequently display marked similarities based on linked meanings, for example fuscal ("foot") and fuschalioz ("pedestal"), durziol ("soldier") and durziuanz ("follower"), and bilischiz ("ink") and bilidio ("engraving"), among many others. Additionally, as observed previously, consistent meanings of suffixes such as -buz ("tree" or "bush") can be identified. This system of consistent meanings attached to word elements and recombination of those elements indicates a complex and orderly structure to the Lingua Ignota that is at odds with spontaneous composition of the word-elements and the ecstatic practice of glossolalia, since glossas – a term used by modern charismatic Christian glossolalists to refer to the languages produced by glossolalia – lack the ordered structure of natural languages.[17]

Another theory that was popular throughout most of the twentieth century, and which still has its adherents even today, is that the Lingua Ignota was used by Hildegard and members of her community as a secret language.[18] No evidence survives that the Lingua Ignota was ever used in such a manner, and indeed the only extant text besides the glossary to make use of the Lingua Ignota, "O orzchis Ecclesia", was likely composed for use outside of the Rupertsberg monastery.[19] This outward-facing use of the Lingua Ignota undermines the theory that it was intended as a private language for use within the cloister. Proponents of the secret language theory assert that the fact that no extant texts make use of the Lingua Ignota as a secret language should not condemn the theory, since the demands of secrecy would make the survival of such texts unlikely.[20] However, as there is evidence that the Lingua Ignota was used in non-secret contexts, this argument from absence is not a strong one. Furthermore, statements by Hildegard herself and by her associates and contemporaries always categorize the Lingua Ignota as part of her prophetic work, something difficult to reconcile with the idea that the Lingua Ignota was used in a cryptographic context.[21]

A third theory for the origin and function of the Lingua Ignota is that it was intended as a reconstruction of the language spoken by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. That the Lingua Ignota is intended to represent this supposed Adamic language seems all but impossible in light of Hildegard's statement to the monks of Villiers, when asked in what language God conversed with Adam, that Adam knew all of the world's languages through divine inspiration.[22] Furthermore, a language spoken by an uncorrupted humankind would be unlikely to include words such as pasiz ("leprosy"), maluizia ("prostitute"), or rabiniz ("robber"). However, that the Lingua Ignota is not itself a recreation of the Adamic language does not mean that there are not significant connections between the concept of the Adamic or angelic language and the Lingua Ignota.

My Proposal

Hildegard was preoccupied in her musical composition with the recreation or reflection of the sound of angelic praise, something she saw as lost to humankind with the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. In 1178, near the end of her life, Hildegard discussed the relation of music to the sound of angelic praise in a letter to the prelates of Mainz:

[Adam] adhuc innocens, non minimam societatem cum angelicarum laudum uocibus habebat…simultudinem ergo uocis angelice, quam in paradiso habebat, Adam perdidit[23]
Adam, being innocent until now, used to have more than a little association with the voices of angelic praise...therefore Adam lost the likeness of an angelic voice which he had in paradise.

She goes on to discuss how composers of religious music contribute to a potential reclamation of humanity's lost knowledge of angelic praise. This discourse situates Hildegard's own music in the context of reflection of angelic praise song.[24]

The Lingua Ignota, too, should be considered with this context in mind. Some years earlier, when Hildegard's editor, Volmar, feared that Hildegard's death approached,[25] he wrote the following passage:[26]

ubi tunc uox inaudite melodie et uox inaudite lingue?
Where then will be the voice of an unheard melody and the voice of an unheard language?

In this passage, Volmar draws a clear parallel between Hildegard's role as a composer – the "voice of an unheard melody" – and as the creator of the Lingua Ignota – the "voice of an unheard language." Hildegard uses the same language of uox – voice – in her own discussion of her music, as quoted previously. This discourse links the Lingua Ignota to Hildegard's musical composition, suggesting that the two may be read as flowing from the same or similar sources – indeed, both the Lingua Ignota and Hildegard's music are referred to as part of her visionary works[27] – and serving the same or similar ends. Thus, although the Lingua Ignota is unlikely to be intended as a recreation of the Adamic language, this shared language of voice invites the Lingua Ignota to be read as part of this project of recreating angelic praise.

The close relationship of the Lingua Ignota with praise is also suggested by the use of the Lingua Ignota in "O orzchis Ecclesia." First, there is the fact that the only extant text in which the Lingua Ignota appears, besides the glossary, is a praise text, and there is no reference to its use in any other context. Second, the function of the words of the Lingua Ignota within the text of "O orzchis Ecclesia" further emphasizes the use of the Lingua Ignota as a vehicle of praise. Words of the Lingua Ignota express magnitude in the cases of orzchis ("immensa") and loifolum ("populorum"), loveliness in the cases of caldemia ("aroma") and chorzta ("choruscans"), and holiness in the case of crizanta ("uncta"). Much of the actual praise of the praise song is expressed using the Lingua Ignota. In this respect, the role of the Lingua Ignota in "O orzchis Ecclesia" is similar to the "ornamental" function of Greek in Latin-Greek macaronic poetry such as that of Johannes Scottus Eriugena, whose work was popular in Hildegard's time.[28]

However, the Lingua Ignota cannot be read simply as a collection of words constructed for the purpose of expressing praise. Such an explanation alone does not account for the inclusion of profane words in the glossary of the Lingua. Instead, the Lingua Ignota must be considered as a totality, including the etymological or pseudo-etymological relationships among its words, in order to understand how it functions in relation to the idea of the uoces laudum angelarum.

Hildegard wrote the Lingua Ignota in the context of an intellectual culture heavily influenced by the idea of discovering and expressing meaning through etymological connections. Works such as the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville and the Summarium Heinrici were highly prominent. Higley notes the formal similarities between the organization of the glossary of the Lingua Ignota and that of such summaria.[29] But while authors such as Isidore were engaged in a project they defined as uncovering meaning through the investigation of etymological connections, Hildegard, in constructing the Lingua Ignota, created pseudo-etymological resemblances among words in order to express her own view of the world and the interconnectedness of certain objects, beings, and concepts – a view informed by her visionary experiences. While a great deal of scholarly attention has been paid to the possibility of etymological connections between words of the Lingua Ignota and words of natural languages,[30] scholars have given comparatively little focus to the crucial question of the system of etymological relationships within the Lingua Ignota itself.

Hildegard frequently created etymological connections within the Lingua Ignota that do not reflect any etymological link in either Latin or German. In some cases, the link between the meanings of the words is obvious; such is the case with aniziz ("soil") and anziur ("farmer"), auiriz ("ship-captain") and auizel ("water"), durziol ("soldier") and durziuanz ("follower"), and bilischiz ("ink") and bilidio ("engraving"). In other cases, however, the relationship between two concepts expressed by their etymological connection within the Lingua Ignota reflects characteristic elements of Hildegard's worldview.

In one such case, the relationship between God and angels in Hildegard's visions and theology is reflected in the relationship between aigonz ("God") and aieganz[31] ("angel") in the Lingua Ignota. The extreme orthographic similarity between aigonz and aieganz – the two words differ only by two letters – does not reflect their etymological relationship in either Latin or German: "Deus" and "angelus", the Latin glosses, are unrelated, as are the German glosses, "goth" and "engel". However, it does reflect the relationship between God and angels in Hildegard's worldview.

Hildegard seems to have viewed angels primarily as mediators between God and humankind. A repeated motif in Hildegard's description of her visions is the image of the "lux uiuens", or "living light." She discusses this "lux uiuens" in a letter written in 1175 to Guibert of Gembloux:

atque uerba que in uisione ista uideo et audio, non sunt sicut uerba que ab ore hominis sonant, sed sicut flamma coruscans et ut nubes in aere puro mota. huius quoque luminis formam nullo modo cognoscere ualeo, sicut nec spheram solis perfecte intueri possum. et in eodem lumine aliam lucem, que lux uiuens mihi nominata est, interdum et non frequenter aspicio, quam nimirum quomodo uideam multo minus quam priorem proferre sufficio…anima autem mea nulla hora caret prefato lumine quod umbra uiuentis luminis uocatur[32]
And the words that I see and hear in that vision are not like the words that sound from the mouth of a person, but rather are like a glittering flame and like clouds in motion in clear air. Nor can I in any way understand the form of this light, just as I cannot gaze fully at the sphere of the sun. And within that light I catch sight, sometimes and not often, of another light, which I have called the living light, and which I am undoubtedly much less able to explain how I may see it than the previous light...but my spirit never lacks the former light, which is called the shadow of the living light.

Hildegard on multiple occasions identifies this term "lux uiuens" with angels, and particularly with angelic virtues.[33] One of those occasions is in the praise song "O gloriosissimi lux uiuens angeli", whose first seven lines are as follows:

O gloriosissimi lux uiuens angeli, / O most glorious angels, living light,
qui infra diuinitatem / who, lower than divinity
diuinos oculos / catch sight of the divine eyes
cum mistica obscuritate / through the mysterious darkness
omnis creature aspicitis / of all that is created,
in ardentibus desideriis / in burning desire
unde numquam potestis saciari[34] / from which you will never be able to be sated

In this passage, Hildegard not only explicitly refers to angels as the "lux uiuens" but also places them between humanity and God: they are able to perceive the "divine eyes" directly. Hildegard's visions are from God, but they are also mediated by the angelic presence of the "lux uiuens". As William Flynn observes, in Hildegard's worldview, "all human knowledge of God, although received in the Spirit, is mediated by angelic virtues who reflect divine attributes."[35]

This mediating role of angels is reflected in the close orthographical relationship between aigonz and aieganz in the Lingua Ignota. The two words are much closer to each other than any other word is to either. They are the first two words of the glossary – as aieganz follows aigonz, the angel literally takes the place "infra diuinitatem" – and the only words of the Lingua Ignota to begin with ai-. Aieganz transmits the majority of the spelling of aigonz, fulfilling orthographically the theological role of the angel.

Another pair of words, amzil ("throat") and amziliz ("homily"), displays through an orthographical relationship a connection that is characteristic of Hildegard's worldview. As with aigonz and aieganz, there is no etymological connection between the Latin glosses[36] "extrex" for amzil and "omelia" for amziliz. However, the relationship between the two is plain enough that coincidence seems an unlikely explanation for this orthographical similarity: the throat is the producer of speech, and the homily is what is spoken and thus produced by the throat. This emphasis on the bodily production of speech aligns with Hildegard's worldview as formed by her areas of interest and expertise. As a composer, Hildegard was naturally concerned with physical sound and speech production; as a physician, she was interested in bodily mechanics. In his introduction to a selection of Hildegard's songs, Brendan Doyle observes that Hildegard's "world view centers around an intimate relationship between body (the mouth, throat, vocal cords, diaphragm, and lungs) and the spirit (breath)."[37] This relationship between body and breath is reflected in the close etymological relationship between amzil and amziliz.

These two pairs of words demonstrate ways in which Hildegard's constructed network of etymological relationships within the Lingua Ignota expresses elements of her worldview, including aspects revealed through her visions. Although the Lingua Ignota does not claim to be a direct representation of an Adamic or angelic language, by reflecting in its construction relationships among objects, beings, and concepts as informed by Hildegard's divine visions it participates alongside Hildegard's music in the project of reclaiming the fitting sounds of angelic praise. By constructing such relationships, Hildegard created a language in which the sound of each word reflects its meaning by indicating connections with other words in the Lingua Ignota, connections that she deliberately made apparent. This reflection of divine order and angelic harmony is in turn what makes the Lingua Ignota suitable for use in contexts of religious praise such as "O orzchis Ecclesia".

The Lingua Ignota is not the product of ecstatic glossolalia, nor of a cryptographic game, nor even of an attempt to recreate an Adamic language. Instead, the Lingua Ignota was created to reflect explicitly, in its network of etymological relationships, certain connections in the order of the universe as it appeared to Hildegard in her visions and based on her study and work.

Bibliography

Flynn, William. "Singing with the Angels: Hildegard of Bingen's Representations of Celestial Music," Conversations with Angels: Essays Towards a History of Spiritual Communication, 1100-1700, ed. Raymond. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. pp. 203-229.

Green, Jonathan. "A New Gloss on Hildegard of Bingen's Lingua Ignota," Viator vol. 36 (2005). pp. 217-234.

Grotans, Anna. Reading in Medieval St. Gall. Cambridge, 2006.

Higley, Sarah. Hildegard of Bingen’s Unknown Language: An Edition, Translation, and Discussion. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Hildegard of Bingen. Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, ed. Fox, trans. Fox, Cunningham, Miller, and Dybdal. Bear & Co., 1987.

Hildegard of Bingen. "Lingua Ignota," ed. Gaertner and Embach, Opera Minora vol. 2, Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio Medievalis vol. 226A. Brepols, 2016.

Waters, Claire. Angels and Earthly Creatures: Preaching, Performance, and Gender in the Later Middle Ages. U. Pennsylvania, 2004.

Wolff, Robert. "Herrschaft und Dienst in Sprache und Natur: Geistesverwandtes bei Hildegard von Bingen und Stefan George," Hildegard von Bingen 1179-1979: Festschrift zum 800. Todestag der Heiligen, ed. Brück. Mainz, 1979.

Footnotes

[1] Hessische Landesbibliothek Wiesbaden MS 2

[2] Berlin Lat. Quart. 674

[3] Higley p. 150

[4] Higley p. 148

[5] Higley p. 149

[6] Codex theol. et phil. 4 253 of Stuttgart

[7] fol. 405v

[8] Specifically defensive or close-combat weaponry.

[9] The stone, not the flower; also jacinth. See Rev. 21:20.

[10] Higley records populum, but after examining a digital facsimile of R I believe the MS has populorum. (As Higley still interprets populum as a genitive, the meaning is unaffected.)

[11] Here the glosses in R and the Codex Theologische diverge. R has ornata, which seems to be an erroneous repetition from line 3. I follow Higley in accepting uncta because of the apparent connection between crizanta here and crizia (church) in the glossary; to anoint is thus to enchurch.

[12] p. 30

[13] Higley p. 40

[14] Green p. 218

[15] Higley p. 35

[16] Higley p. 36

[17] Higley p. 39

[18] Green p. 219

[19] Green p. 219

[20] Wolff p. 244

[21] Green p. 220

[22] Green p. 228

[23] Ep. 23; quoted in Flynn, p. 210. Translation my own.

[24] Flynn p. 210-13

[25] Volmar's fears were unfounded, at least during his lifetime; he died four years before Hildegard.

[26] Quoted in Green, p. 221. Translation my own.

[27] Green p. 225

[28] Green p. 229-30

[29] p. 24

[30] Green p. 223

[31] B reads aleganz, but all other manuscripts read aieganz.

[32] Ep. 103r, quoted in Flynn, p. 204. Translation my own.

[33] Flynn p. 205

[34] Quoted in Flynn, p. 216. Translation my own.

[35] p. 208

[36] amziliz is not glossed in German.

[37] Fox p. 364

In Return of the King, Tolkien states that March 25, the day of the destruction of the Ring and Sauron’s overthrow, was adopted by both the Men of the Reunited Kingdom and by the hobbits as the new New Year’s Day. He goes into further detail on this point in the Appendices and in “The Calendars”, published in Peoples of Middle-earth. But why March 25?

The choice of March 25 relates, I think, to the idea that the Legendarium at some level represents an alternate mythological history for England – that the Shire, and many of the surrounding lands, form what is now England – because March 25 was in fact the official start of the year in England from the late 12th century through 1752!

Although January 1 was the start of the new year in the Roman Empire and continued to be called “New Year’s Day” in Europe throughout the Middle Ages, in medieval Europe January 1 was almost never used as the date on which the new year actually began. The most common dates from which the year was reckoned were Christmas, Easter, and the Annunciation, also called Lady Day – March 25. For example, in modern reckoning, the year 2019 began today, January 1. In thirteenth-century England, however, it would not have begun until March 25 – and if the year were reckoned from Christmas, it would already have started a week ago.

In truth, neither Easter nor Lady Day is a convenient day from which to reckon the year. Easter has the obvious drawback that it does not fall on the same date every year – Easter is celebrated (in the West) on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox, meaning that years counted from Easter to Easter vary dramatically in the number of days. Lady Day, March 25, is a fixed date, but since Easter may fall before, on, or after this date, reckoning from Lady Day produces some years with two Easters and some with none at all.

Christmas was the most popular date from which to reckon the year in the early Middle Ages, but it was gradually supplanted by Lady Day, and England retained the Lady Day reckoning for official purposes, as mentioned previously, until 1752. Reckoning the year from March 25 thus came to be thought of as a characteristically British practice.

I think, therefore, Tolkien chose to emphasize that March 25 was the day from which the year was reckoned in Middle-earth in the Fourth Age in order to provide an alternate explanation of sorts for the custom in England, the idea being that the practice of reckoning from March 25 in the Middle Ages and beyond could be viewed as a continuation of a custom dating back to the overthrow of Sauron in the mythical past.

Of course, the information I have given here only scratches the surface of the exciting field that is medieval chronology! Two excellent – and short! – introductory works on the subject are “Medieval Chronology: Theory and Practice” by R. Dean Ware and “The Beginning of the Year in the Middle Ages” by Reginald Poole.