Published in Mulier aut Femina. Idealism or reality of women in the Middle Ages

Keywords: Keywords: 12th Century, Experience, Feminine mysticism, Metaphysics of the senses, Rationality.

Hildegard of Bingen habitually wrote from the perspective of her visionary gift, but on occasions she also reflected on the latter. The majority of her works were written with reference to a specific mystical-cognitive experience; but she also analyses this and develops, in various passages, a mystical epistemology. At the base of her epistemology are the «interior» senses, which she locates in the soul. «Interior» vision and hearing are linked to reason and memory, through which she carries out an original intellectual activity: the auditory contemplation of truth. Thus, starting from her mystical-cognitive experience, Hildegard arrives at the formulation of a theory of mystical epistemology. Subsequently she extrapolates from this a personal hermeneutic understanding which allows her to reveal new «mysteries» of the scriptures, essential matter for the faithful, and hitherto unexplained by either the sages or the doctores, despite their erudition.