the Benedictine Abbey of Newark
Bruno Mello is a Catholic monk of the Benedictine Abbey of Newark. He currently studies at Seton Hall University, where he is pursing a joint M.Div. in Pastoral Theology and M.A. in Moral Theology. He also teaches philosophy and assists in outdoor education programs at St. Benedict’s Preparatory School in Newark, New Jersey. His research interests include Catholic personalism, the aesthetics of Jacques Maritain, and medieval monasticism.
The Cartesian dualism indicative of modernity has contributed to our current ecological ails, in which environmental issues such as stewardship and preservation are often seen as purely physical or scientific concerns. The premodern writings of the twelfth-century mystic Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) offer a potent alternative to this way of thinking. Hildegard envisions a mutual relationship between humanity and the rest of creation that is physical, moral, and spiritual. Read through the lens of eco-theology, Hildegard’s writings highlight themes of interconnectedness, sacramentality, eco-justice as social justice, and the uniquely Hildegardian concept of viriditas (“greening”). Contemporary scholarship, however, tends to downplay the role of orthodox Trinitarian theology in Hildegard’s ecological thought, and so risks a failure to understand the full power of her mystical vision of creation. Beginning with an analysis of Hildegard’s explicitly Trinitarian visions, this paper will proceed to demonstrate how the vivid and anthropocentric creation theology of her visionary works (Scivias, Liber Vitae Meritorum and Liber Divinum Operum) is essentially related to her notion of a Triune God. By rooting her understanding of material creation within the Christian doctrine of God as a relational trinity of persons, Hildegard can help us open up new ways of thinking about preservation and stewardship, grounded in ancient and medieval notions of analogy, relation, and participation. This paper hopes to encourage continued study of Hildegard’s eco-theological imagination, holding her up as an exemplar for Christians and non-Christians alike as someone who, by embracing the unresolved tensions of her own religious tradition (one/three, eternity/time, transcendence/relation, etc.), allowed those tensions to drive forward a robust ecological vision. While her theology can potentially be adopted wholesale by Christians, she also offers a model for those of all faith traditions of how to ground theories of creation, stewardship, and preservation deeply within a specific religious faith.