"The Lord, the Giver of Life:" A reflection on the theology of the Holy Spirit in the twelfth century

Towards the end of the twelfth century, the Calabrian abbot Joachim of Fiore (c. 1132-1202) envisioned a Trinitarian history of humankind in three grand status: the age of the Law or the Father, the age of the Son and of grace, and finally, a third age yet to come, which was to be the age of the Holy Spirit.1 As we enter the third millennium of Christian history, Joachim's prophecy may come to mind, inviting reflection on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the history of Christian thought and practice. Nevertheless, the flamboyant Joachim must not distract us from the many other, equally original thinkers of his time. Indeed, we may find that it is not Joachim who offers us the most fruitful of his century's resources, but instead, a handful of men and women from the older, Benedictine tradition, who sought to unfold the meaning of the Church's already centuries-old confession, "We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life." Quietly and without fanfare, they developed a theology of the Holy Spirit at work in creation and in the restoration of the human person, for the good of the ecclesial community as well as the personal benefit and intellectual growth of the individual. It is my intention to present in what follows a brief survey of four of these twelfth-century theologians' insights into the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and then to conclude with a few thoughts on how their teaching might enrich Christian practice in the present.

In the early Middle Ages, it was not uncommon for children to be dedicated to a monastery by their parents or guardians, and placed there to be brought up. Both Rupert of Deutz (1075-1129) and Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) entered the Benedictine family by this means, and proceeded to distinguish themselves as theologians and Scripture commentators. There are some striking parallels between their careers. Senior of the two, Rupert was an oblate child of the monastery of St. Laurent near Liege. Hildegard was entrusted by her parents to the aristocratic recluse, Jutta of Diessenberg, and be- came her successor as abbess of a convent of Benedictine nuns. Born a generation or so ahead of Hildegard, Rupert died some ten years before she began to record her visionary experiences.2 Like Hildegard, he claimed to have been the recipient of a series of visionary encounters with the triune God, and described them in an autobiographical chapter of a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew.

Some of Rupert's visions occurred during his adolescence, while he and other monks of St. Laurent loyal to their reforming abbot were living in exile in France. Others came to him later, in his twenties, as he was deciding whether or not to be ordained to the priesthood. In those politically and personally troubled circumstances, Rupert tells us, he despaired of his life, but turned for comfort to the study of Scripture, especially the prophet Ezekiel. Finally, he invoked the Holy Spirit directly for aid and understanding. He explains:

Even if there is one substance of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one divinity and [one] inseparable operation, nevertheless, just as the proper work of the Father is the creation of humankind, and the proper work of the Son is the redemption, so the proper work of the Holy Spirit is the illumination of that same human being, the race of revelations, and the distribution of all gifts.3

In the visions as Rupert describes them, the Spirit plays a prominent role, comforting him in the midst of anxiety, appearing once in the guise of a venerable, white-haired old man, and later in the shape of a mysterious globe of liquid fire, which poured itself into Rupert's bosom, filling him with a sense of peace and confidence. His prayers seem to have been abundantly answered, as his visions culminated in acceptance of a vocation to interpret the Bible for those who had no books4 as well as his decision to accept ordination to the priesthood. In this way, Rupert's personal experience of the Spirit found meaning and validation within the ecclesial community, which he felt called to serve both through scholarship and in the sacramental priesthood.

Although the door to priestly ministry was closed for Hildegard, her appropriation of her visionary experiences resembles the selfunderstanding achieved by Rupert. She dictated the record of her visions in a three-part collection entitled Scivias, probably an abbreviation of Scite vias, or "Know the ways [of the Lord]." In the prologue, she describes a "very great splendour," reminiscent of Rupert's globe of liquid fire, and a heavenly voice instructing her to transmit a record of the visions she had received since childhood. Like Rupert's experience, Hildegard's encounter was characterized by a sense of having been penetrated by light and fire, followed by a sudden conviction that she could understand the inner or spiritual sense of Scripture. She relates:

It came to pass that in the eleven hundred and forty-first year of the Incarnation of God's Son, Jesus Christ, when I was forty-two years and seven months old, that the heavens were opened and a blinding light of exceptional brilliance flowed through my entire brain. And so it kindled my whole heart and breast like a flame, not burning but warming, as the sun warms anything on which its rays fall. And suddenly I grasped the underlying meaning of the books-of the Psalter, the Gospels, and other Catholic books of the Old and New Testaments-not, however, that I understood how to construe the words of the text or their division into syllables or their cases and tenses.5