The Colour of Angels

Cosmology, Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination

Constance Classen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134678198
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The Colour of Angels uncovers the gender politics behind our attitude to the senses. Using a wide variety of examples, ranging from the sensuous religious visions of the middle ages through to nineteenth-century art movements, this book reveals a previously unexplored area of womens history.

Part I
Cosmology

1 On the color of angels
The sensory cosmologies of St. Hildegard, Boehme, and Fourier

The medieval cosmos was an intricate tapestry of colors, sounds, and scents. In heaven saints and angels sang in an eternally flowering garden. In hell, damned souls cried out in a foul, fiery pit. This potent cosmic imagery was reinforced by the sensory dimensions of Christian ritual. Incense, music, vestments, and the savors of feasts and fasts helped to engage participants through all of their senses.¹

Medieval cosmology was not simply a feast for the senses, however. The medievals held that every sensory image embodied a spiritual truth and participated in a cosmic code of meaning. On the level of popular culture, the basic elements of this code were known by all: doves stood for the Holy Spirit, blue was the color of the Blessed Virgin, incense represented prayers, sulfur was a sign of the Devil, and so on. Such iconography – expounded in church, elaborated in folktales, depicted in paintings – formed an intrinsic part of the popular mentality.

On a scholarly level, theologians, philosophers, and alchemists attempted to tease out the more complex and arcane meanings encased in the sensory signs of the cosmos.² The scriptural commentaries of the eighth-century English monk, Bede, exemplify this search for the spiritual content within the material form. In a passage in which he comments on the biblical description of Solomon’s temple, for instance, Bede transforms all the material elements of the temple – stones, woods, precious metals, colors – into spiritual values, so that the physical building becomes an edifice of morals.³

Not only sensory images, but the senses themselves were allegorized by medieval and Renaissance writers. Common tropes were to compare the five senses to the gates of a city or the windows of a citadel. Such allegories represented the senses as avenues for physical and moral good or evil. For example, Peter Damian declared in the eleventh century: “Close then, beloved, these gates of the senses of the body, and block up the phalanxes of the onrushing vices, and open them up for the troops of the spiritual virtues.”⁴

This allegorization of the senses had a long literary history. It was customary, for example, to regard every mention of the number five in Scripture as referring to the five senses. Philo, a first-century exponent of Hellenic Judaism, encountered such a wealth of sensory symbolism in Scripture that it sometimes seems that he regarded the Bible as one long series of sensory allegories. For example, the five cities of the Sodomites are said by Philo to represent the five senses as instruments of worldly pleasure, while the three wives of Abraham stand for the three senses of hearing, sight and smell as media of revelation.⁵ Seven senses come into play when Philo wishes to break down the sevenfold punishment of Cain into one punishment per offending sensory organ:

First upon the eyes, because they saw what was not fitting; second, upon the ears, because they heard what was not proper; third upon the nose, which was deceived by smoke and steam; fourth upon taste, which was a servant of the belly’s pleasure; fifth upon touch [for bringing about] the seizure of cities and the capture of men . . . sixth upon the tongue and the organs of speech for being silent about things that should be said and for saying things that should be kept silent; seventh, upon the lower belly which with lawless licentiousness sets the senses on fire.⁶

The mystics of the Middle Ages incorporated both popular symbolism and techniques of scholarly exegesis in their writings. At the same time mystics were able to claim a direct insight into the sacred and sensory order of the cosmos. This allowed them to elaborate very personal descriptions of cosmic reality.

It was not always possible, however, to relate a mystical experience using the terms of ordinary perceptual experience.⁷ Theologians, in fact, often asserted that there were two sets of senses: an external physical set and an internal, spiritual one.⁸ Thus a Christian could practice extreme asceticism in terms of the physical senses, and still lead a rich sensory life with regard to the spiritual senses: seeing divine light, tasting heavenly sweetness, and so on. This double sensory life was experienced by many mystics, who would seem to have more than made up for their physical deprivations by the intensity of their spiritual delights.⁹

This preliminary consideration of medieval notions of sensory symbolism serves as an introduction to the three sensory cosmologies examined below. The first is the work of a twelfth-century nun, St. Hildegard of Bingen. The second was developed by a seventeenth-century Protestant mystic and shoemaker, Jacob Boehme. The third was created by the early nineteenth-century utopianist, Charles Fourier. Whereas St. Hildegard produced her cosmology within an established tradition and community, Boehme and Fourier were both lone thinkers who nonetheless acquired significant followings.

As a product of the Middle Ages, St. Hildegard’s cosmology most closely exemplifies the symbol-laden thought of that time. However, the cosmologies of Jacob Boehme and Charles Fourier also resonate with traditional notions of sensory codes and correspondences, although tempered with the alchemical theories of the Renaissance in the case of the former, and with Enlightenment ideals of social reform in that of the latter.

These particular cosmologies are considered here because, while all three draw from a common fund of sensory symbolism, each presents a distinct and remarkable understanding of the sensory order of the cosmos. Exploring the different ways in which the senses are elaborated in the writings of Hildegard, Boehme, and Fourier, we discover the extraordinary sensory complexity of earlier Western cosmologies. It is an exploration which initiates us into a cosmos alive with celestial harmonies, multi-colored angels, and planetary aromas, while at the same time revealing the webs of religious and cultural values underlying this compelling imagery.

St. Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen was born in Germany in 1098. She entered conventual life as a child and eventually, at the age of 38, became abbess of her community of Benedictine nuns. Hildegard’s abilities were extraordinarily diverse. Aside from her duties as abbess, she practiced and wrote books on medicine,¹⁰ composed liturgical music, and even designed robes for her nuns.¹¹

It was Hildegard’s mystical visions, however, which brought her the greatest renown. These began when she was a child and were marked by a sensation of strong light. As Hildegard clarified in a letter to an inquiring monk, however, she did not experience her visions through her bodily senses:

I do not see these things with my external eyes nor do I hear them with my external ears. I do not perceive them through the thoughts of my heart or through the mediation of my five senses. I see them much more in my soul alone . . .¹²

Although accustomed to receiving visions from an early age, Hildegard did not record her mystical experiences until she was 42. At that time, she writes, “a burning light coming from heaven poured into my mind” and “I heard a heavenly voice speaking to me: Proclaim and write thus.”¹³ Three major visionary books resulted from this prompting: Scivias (“Know the Ways”), The Merits of Life, and Divine Works. Hildegard also wrote hundreds of letters in which she used her visionary knowledge to provide guidance to everyone from popes and emperors to ordinary religious and lay people. Still holding the position of abbess, Hildegard died in 1179.

Hildegard’s visions consist primarily of intricate tableaux of supernatural figures and scenes. Each of the elements of these tableaux was held by the saint to encode a particular theological truth. She describes one vision as follows:

I saw a very great and peaceful brightness which was similar to a flame. This brightness had a lot of eyes in it. . . . Inside this brightness, there was another brightness which . . . had the clearness of purple lightning inside itself. I also saw the earth with people on it. The people were carrying milk in their vessels, and they were making cheese from this milk. Some of the milk was thick, from which strong cheese was being made; some of the milk was thin, from which mild cheese was being curdled; and some of the milk was spoiling, from which bitter cheese was being produced.¹⁴

Hildegard explains in her commentary that the eye-filled brightness signifies the knowledge of God, and the purple lightning within, “that the knowledge of God has the Only-Begotten [Jesus Christ] inside itself.” The milk carried in vessels, in turn, stands for the procreative seed in the bodies of humans (in contrast to the lightning, which symbolizes the “procreative seed” of God). Thick milk – good seed – makes strong cheese – strong people. Weak cheese, similarly, symbolizes weak people, and the bitter cheese troubled people.¹⁵

The use of evocative metaphors – purple lightning, bitter cheese, and so on – to convey spiritual values is characteristic of Hildegard. Part of the appeal of Hildegard’s work consists in the saint’s ability to find meaning not only in her heavenly visions, but in the simple experiences of everyday life. A blue hyacinth, for example, is said by Hildegard to be like the Word of God in the way it brightens its surroundings; while water glittering in the sun is said to remind one of pure intentions.¹⁶ Sections of her work with headings such as “Similarities of a Garden, a Sheep, and a Pearl to Humans,” and “About the Rain-Bringing Air and the White Skin, and What These Signify” similarly expound the moral messages of the material world.¹⁷ Even as apparently unremarkable an object as a stone is transformed into a revelation of sensory and divine truth once it comes under Hildegard’s mystical gaze:

In a stone there is moist greenness and tangibleness and reddish fire. It has moist greenness so that it may not be destroyed and crushed, tangibleness so that it can be used as a dwelling or for defense, and a reddish fire so that it can give warmth and have solidness from its hardness. The moist greenness signifies God, who never becomes dry nor is limited in virtue. The tangibleness stands for the Word, who was able to be touched and grasped after being born from the Virgin. The reddish fire signifies the Holy Spirit, who is the attendant and the illuminator of the hearts of faithful people.¹⁸

Hildegard often used the senses or their sensory organs as the subjects for religious allegory. In her song to St. Ursula she writes:

your eyes are like sapphire
and your ears like Mount Bethel
and your nose is like a mountain of myrrh and incense
and your mouth like the sound of many waters.¹⁹

Here different sensory organs are associatcd with corresponding stimuli: the eyes with a bright gem, the ears with Bethel where God spoke to Jacob (Gen. 28: 17– 19), and the nose with incense. The mouth, interestingly, is presented not as the organ of taste, but as that of speech, and as such is compared to the sound of water. Each of these associations had a special theological significance for Hildegard. “A mountain of myrrh and incense,” for example, was a customary way for Hildegard to refer to good works.²⁰ The implication is that St. Ursula embodies and communicates virtue through all of her senses.

According to Hildegard the senses “are like precious stones in a person.”²¹ The soul, the body, and the senses together form what the saint called the “three footpaths” of the human being. The soul gives life to the body and the senses. The body attracts the soul and employs the senses. The senses affect the soul and attract the body.²² By using vivid imagery in her writing, Hildegard interested her readers in the theological values which informed her metaphors. At the same time she encouraged them to relate to the world of the senses as a world of sacred meaning, and not simply one of physical pleasure or displeasure.

Hildegard’s metaphors are occasionally synaesthetic, with different qualities blending together to produce uniquely evocative images. In one example, Hildegard combines smell and touch to write of an odor being “as smooth as gold.”²³ In another, smell and sound are united as she tells of heavenly trumpets which blow forth aromatic songs of myrrh and frankincense.²⁴ Describing how Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist, Hildegard “whirls around” a variety of sensory impressions until they melt into one overwhelming sensation of sweetness:

This is the same as if some precious ointment were rolled into some bread and a sapphire were placed in some wine. I might whirl that around into such a sweet taste so that your mouth would not be able to distinguish that bread with the ointment nor that wine in wi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Cosmology
• Part II Gender
• Part III Aesthetics
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index