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I had previously read Bruce Hozeski’s translation of this work, entitled Hildegard’s Healing Plants, and I’ll explain why Priscilla Throop’s is infinitely better. Hozeski’s is only the first section, which covers plants, of Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica. While “Plants” is definitely the longest section, making for about half the book, Throop’s translation covers the other nine: Elements (rocks and also water from notable European rivers, each with different healing properties), Trees (differentiated with plants due to woody trunks?), Stones (including gemstones), Metals, Fish, Birds, Animals, and Reptiles. If those last four categories seem kind of redundant, it helps to know that this was translated from Latin and she probably didn’t think whales with their “certain relationship to the nature of fish as well as to the nature of beasts such as the lion and the bear” were literally fish. So I wish these titles had been translated as “swimming creatures,” “flying creatures,” etc. with Animals as a catchall. The section on Reptiles is interesting because it has a lot of mythical creatures such as the dragon and the basilisk as well as reptiles and amphibians and invertebrates; it just seems to be all the stuff Hildegard doesn’t like. This is an example of where her moralism comes into play. Most of those were divine punishment for the fall of Eden, and then born out of the rotten cadavers of the Noah’s flood.
So as I said, there’s repentant moralism in this, and someone actually pointed out that one of the remedies in this just sounded like punishment for sexual licentiousness, which is kind of funny because it’s exactly the kind of thing you can imagine a nun writing. But when reading a text that’s almost a thousand years old, it’s easy to focus on what it got wrong — what’s truly amazing is how much she was right about! Hildegard was writing in the 12th century, a time where most of Europe didn’t have much going on for it. The fact that her herbal compendium not only mentions plants from the far East such as ginger but also gets their usage right shows that she was either getting this knowledge directly from Asia or daring to refer back to classical texts. I don’t want to know what the rest of medieval Europe was doing for women’s medicine, but the fact that St. Hildegard dared address it is nothing short of revolutionary.
Physica is organized by… ingredient? I wish it was organized differently because if you are looking for a remedy (I read every page of this to get in character for a D&D campaign where I’m a nun) you have to consult every entry. Throop has provided an index in the back, which makes sorting through easier. But at times it’s just a bit confusing whether this work was intended as a natural history or as a guide to medicine, when in reality it’s both. I’m curious to read her Causae et Curae, which is supposed to be organized by ailment, but I am not aware of any English translations of it as of yet.
So as I said, there’s repentant moralism in this, and someone actually pointed out that one of the remedies in this just sounded like punishment for sexual licentiousness, which is kind of funny because it’s exactly the kind of thing you can imagine a nun writing. But when reading a text that’s almost a thousand years old, it’s easy to focus on what it got wrong — what’s truly amazing is how much she was right about! Hildegard was writing in the 12th century, a time where most of Europe didn’t have much going on for it. The fact that her herbal compendium not only mentions plants from the far East such as ginger but also gets their usage right shows that she was either getting this knowledge directly from Asia or daring to refer back to classical texts. I don’t want to know what the rest of medieval Europe was doing for women’s medicine, but the fact that St. Hildegard dared address it is nothing short of revolutionary.
Physica is organized by… ingredient? I wish it was organized differently because if you are looking for a remedy (I read every page of this to get in character for a D&D campaign where I’m a nun) you have to consult every entry. Throop has provided an index in the back, which makes sorting through easier. But at times it’s just a bit confusing whether this work was intended as a natural history or as a guide to medicine, when in reality it’s both. I’m curious to read her Causae et Curae, which is supposed to be organized by ailment, but I am not aware of any English translations of it as of yet.