"Sanctissimam humanitatem Filii Dei negant". Ildegarda e gli eretici fra visione e teologia in Germania nel XII secolo

Hildegard of Bingen (†1179) developed a complex theology based on the visions she affirmed she had had since her childhood. Her point of view about Christology changed radically in the works she composed after 1163. Before that date the prophetissa had considered most of all the soteriologic role of Incarnation (Jesus as saviour); after that, she underlined Incarnation as God's original project, as the beginning and the aim of creation. This is particulary clear in the Liber divinorum operum, which she started writing in 1163, after a «vision of great mistery and force». In the same year Hildegard wrote a famous letter in which she describes the visions she had about the "heretics". The execution on the stake of eleven heretics in August 1163 in Cologne points out a significat coincidence. Moreover, in the same period Hildegard had meaningful relationships with Elisabeth of Schönau and her brother Eckbert, among the first witnesses of the "cathars" on the Rhine. The assumption of Incarnation, of the God become flesh, as structuring feature of her theology could be Hildegard's answer to the dualistic doctrines ascribed to the "cathars". In this regard, the prophetissa seems very near some texts and themes of the German monastic authors of her time, who developed the idea of an «unconditional Incarnation», independent of sin.