Ver, conocer, imaginar: La visión de la Fuente y las tres Doncellas en el “Liber Divinorum Operum” de Hildegard de Bingen

Abstract

This article develops some of the themes related to the Vision and the senses using as example the visionary texts of the third part of the “Liber divinorum operum” (LDO, III,3) of Hildegard von Bingen, the German nun who lived between 1093 ane 1179: The “senses” must be understood here, in the first place, as the vision (external and internal in accordance with the augustinian tradition) and the audition; in the second place, as the search for a “sense” as an activity oriented towards knowledge, as for example the hermeneutic activity implicit in the reading and in the interpretation of a given texts or of an image. In this context, we propose that the writing and the iconographic illustration of her works were taken by Hildegard and by her contemporaries as a searching process for sense through the Vision: seeing, knowing (writing) and imagining. This process leads to the discovery of a “sense” for the visible word and: in the last resort, may lead to the contemplation of the supernatural realities through the exercise of the “corporal” and “spiritual” senses. The visionary Image will thus become the meeting point of the two worlds, the visible and the invisible. Hildegard von Bingen- Visionary image- seeing – knowing -imagining