When I first clicked on this week's reading the name Hildegard was incredibly familiar but I couldn't identify where I knew it from. As it turns out I knew it from the incredibly beautiful and descriptive medieval illuminations that feature Hildegard and the stories of her visions. Reading the writing that inspired these images, however, made me examine the surrounding illuminations more than I had a couple of years ago when I first studied medieval illuminations. In particular, the illumination featured in Part one of the Scivias where Hildegard is discussing an image she saw in one of her visions stuck out to me. The image which she describes as a "very large, round, and shady object" that features an "outer edge with a bright flame which had a darker layer under it" is an exceptionally weird description. But the illuminations next to the text which features a medieval rendering of what that artist believed Hildegard saw was especially telling. Looking at it for the first time I knew immediately it was a reference to the medieval concept of the "mandorla" a shape that was often used behind the figures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary to indicate their status as crowned by God, or holy. This shape that Hildegard was seeing in her visions was not an odd or offputting one for her time, but rather one that was incredibly common and almost certainly could have been found in many of the churches she preached in.
I think it is incredibly interesting that Hildegard would describe and approve an illumination of a shape that was so common within medieval iconography and wondered if she had done this to potentially corroborate the legitimacy of her visions. By using such a well-known visual symbol of Christ and Mary it appears as though she is trying to validate her visions with the public through using such a clear symbol of religious figures.