While reading Hildegard, I thought of Lucretius and his opinion on how religion causes fear and makes people do certain things. Hildegard did not speak of her visions or about what she heard out of humility, and it seems she would not ever have shared her visions if she had not been prompted. She mentions falling ill and being sick for a long time, a sickness she considered a scourge of God. I thought it was very interesting the feeling of shame around her visions and what she heard, at least I personally interpreted it that way at the very beginning.
When Hildegard is simply describing the third vision of the first part, I was very lost. I don’t think it was because of the language used, but rather just an overwhelming amount of detail and description. My favorite part of her description of the vision was when she wrote, “Nevertheless, the light was not able to stretch out to the darkness nor was the darkness able to stretch out to the light” (28). I simply enjoyed the imagery. I thought the large amount and variety of fire imagery was very interesting. The mention of fire in Vision Three: 3 was the one I found most interesting. It mentions how God uses fire as a divine punishment but also as divine consolation for those that remain Catholic. I think it is interesting how fire is both good and bad in this section. In the section Vision Three: 10 Hildegard writes, “… the divine majesty foresees it with a seeing eye to which all things are naked,” which reminds me of the Eye of Sauron from the Hobbit (32). It also doesn’t really provide comfort and brings up uneasy feelings/fear caused by religion.