The Mystical Unknown Language revealed to Hildegard of Bingen - Lingua Ignota

one of the pillars of contemporary philosophy of language and semiotics is that the relationship between the sign and the thing signified is arbitrary to quote the famous French linguist ferdinant sour that's just a complicated way of saying that when I want to refer to the concept of I don't know dog I can use any signal or symbol that I want as long as it's comprehensible to me and comprehensible to the person I'm talking to interacting with so I could write or say dog or Shen or Kev or Oak and all of these are basically equal in terms of representing the concept dog the relationship is just linguistic convention and no language or symbol set does that any better or any worse than any other at capturing just that relationship now that relationship of sign and signifier in the premodern period is much more contentious indeed many of the philosophical religious and spiritual thinkers of the ancient and medieval world just assume the opposite of what we assume now for them there is a strong inherent ontological metaphysical link between the symbolic order and the larger physical and metaphysical dimensions of reality from the language of religious ritual to magical incantation even the use of taboo replacement in language itself one may even say that there is a strong adamantine connection between semiotics the study of how we represent reality with ontology the study of reality itself for virtually every esoteric mystical occult in some sense even religious thinkers there is a strong metaphysical link between language symbols and reality and I've made lots of episodes lots of videos exploring just that connection between the world of esoteric and mystical symbols of language symbols and communication ranging from the Angelic speech of the so-called enoan language to the signs and seals of supernatural beings the complex and sometimes odd symbols that populate occult hes and on and on but in this episode I want to turn to the ignota lingua or the lingua ignota the unknown language along with its lit ignot the unknown letters of the famed medieval Mystic hild deard of Bingham one of the most extraordinary women in Western history from to my opinion now aside from her duties as AB which were extraordinary at that time she was also a physician a scientist a composer a Mystic Visionary and the creator revealer of the mystical language taught at that time only to the sisters in her community let's explore this curious lingua ignota and the script that it was written in if you're interested in Magic hermetic philosophy alchemi cabala or the history of the occult and its symbolism make sure to subscribe here to esoterica and check out my other content on topics and well that's a terrorism also if you want to support this work of providing accessible scholarly and free content on these kinds of topics and as a terorism here on YouTube again for free I'd hope you consider supporting my work over at my patreon with a one-time donation maybe with PayPal with a super thanks that you can see just below the video or by picking up some of our cool like black metal style merch over on the store tab of the channel but now to hild theard of bingan and her mystical unknown language I'm Dr Justin Sledge and welcome to esoterica where we explore the Arcane in history philosophy and [Music] [Music] religion [Music] hilard was born to an aristocratic family around 1098 she was offered by her family as a gift to God a not uncommon fate and well to do families with too many daughters and she was enclosed as a young child with the hermit Yuta at this time Hildegard was already experiencing Visions as a child often accompanied by excruciating headaches that's a theme we see in many Mystics especially women Mystics from Hildegard to Simon V in the 20th century but apparently she kept these mystical Visions to herself for obvious reasons upon yuta's death in 1136 she was elected to lead her Convent which she then moved to a remote area around robertsburg which she would live there until her death on the 17th of September 1179 in 2012 she was declared to be a doctor of the Church of the Catholic Church sharing this distinction with luminary like Thomas aquinus and during her lifetime Hildegard proved to be a deaft politician a profound mystical Visionary producing three substantial volumes of Visions a rhetorically powerful preacher a prolific letter writer a careful scientist and Doctor along with an innovator in musical composition and the bringer forth as she puts it of the strange language that's the topic of this episode today needless to say she was one of the most brilliant and talented women of the Middle Ages maybe just in Western history and it's exciting to be able to cover her and I'm looking forward to several episodes on hild theard of bingan along with the massive output of musical medical and Visionary Works Hildegard also managed to find some time to produce a mystical language this glossery is actually about 1,6 gloss or translated words it's about 1,2 if you count the repeats and the gloss words along with a hymn partially composed in this unknown language this glossery is subdivided along different classes of entities from Divine creatures all the way down to different kinds of Sinners it can be found in the main manuscript containing her non-medical and scientific text called the reason codex or the giant codex because it's a massive chain book now located in the hessen State library of course it's going to be a massive chain book perfect deserving for Hildegard now this kind of glossery isn't terribly unusual in the Middle Ages lists of Latin terms and their vernacular equivalent called sumaria were really popular among people whose Latin was never strong and Hildegard herself would have never gotten a very strong education in Latin to begin with now what makes this sumaria unusual is that all of those thousand plus words are said to have flowed through a medieval woman from a mystical or Divine source and are otherwise unattested in any natural language the text describes it as lingua ignot pum hominum hildum prata or unknown language brought forth by the simple human Hildegard as if she were simple in any sense of that term but I do think that term prola is actually pretty instructive it seems that Hildegard thinks of the linga ignota as being somewhere between being discovered or revealed or simply being the invention of Hildegard she's bringing it forth prol it allows the reader to wonder about the exact origins of the language itself further there's also some evidence that the Samaria itself may have been the backbone for a much larger project though some of that is all lost rather than just being a list of words which it can't be a language on itself languages of course need grammar and syntax and other things you can't just have a list of words Hildegard and her secretary volmar actually did hint that a lot more was going on with this language the lingua seems to have been taken around 8 years to develop from around 1150 to 1158 which is actually the same time that she was working on her principal scientific works so there might be a connection there as well in fact as early as 1153 she writes to the Pope that multimodem mum sonar but she writes the great one without defect has just touched a lowly dwelling Hildegard so that it might see a miracle and might form unknown letters and might utter an unknown language and that it may by itself sound forth multitudinous harmonious Melodies it's kind of melodic in both the Latin and the English and in around 1173 volar her secretary actually writes ubby Tonk Vox in aite at Vox in aite lingu where then will the voice of your unheard music be and the voice of your unknown language and as we'll see Hildegard did produce at least one Symphonia partly in the linga ignota which we'll take a look at in more detail in just a minute what can we say about the sumaria or the glossery as we have it as I just noted it contains a little over a thousand words which reflect the needs and concerns of Hilgard primarily as an abis the list contains only substantives there are virtually no abstract nouns there are basically no adjectives adverbs or verbs so as it stands now it can't really strictly speaking be a language it's just a list of basically definite nouns the words themselves are grouped into various kinds of taxonomy such as spiritual entities skinship relations skin diseases again this was being composed during her scientific period Church offices monastic and Village Life various kinds of Trades and titles temporal divisions including times of the year and words for the natural realm including trees plants and even insects again I think this is connected at some level to our scientific works as well effectively what we have here is a list of about a thousand or so words most Central to hildegard's life world the words themselves in the lingua seem to have their Origins partially in Latin though to some significant degree also in the medieval German vernacular met with dramatic transformation frankly by Hildegard now to note here it's not at all clear how to pronounce the words of the lingua ignota for well a few reasons there's some difference in the actual orthography between the two major manuscripts that contain the sumaria also this is all coming out of a person whose native language is Medieval German and I have no idea how medieval German would have pronounced and those dialects of German even very wildly at this time so we aren't always sure of the spelling of how these texts were composed much less the reflection in pronunciation so the orthography and the pronunciation may not always agree either I'm going to reconstruct I guess the pronunciations as best as I can but who knows how they really were meant to be pronounced so with those caveats in mind what are some features of the lingua ignota it seems to have had a preference for words containing the z sound the z sound and the L Sound and Zia actually may have acted as a kind of grammatical feminine gender marker note for instance that Nazis is for rooster whereas nazia is for hen the presence of that z sound that's structur in an opening syllable with a vowel gives the language a kind of droning buzzing sound a bit like the vernacular music of the time kind of think of it sounding like a I don't know a hery Gertie or something interestingly enough however many magical mystical languages found throughout the Western tradition actually have a preference for that z sound from the from the Greek magical papy all the way into the Zohar and in some sense even an enoan words also end typically and booze inm to indicate trees such as gramy Boos for Chestnut and orchie booze for Oak and the ending skia seems to indicate herbs and other kinds of wildlife with kisia for Lily and luia for duck like her native German the lingu OTA seems to have relished in compound words such as leamons for book you can notice the word Liber from the Latin for book and the Z sound we find all over the lingua ignota Kiron lias for M and isio lies for gospel book it seems like lies is something like a root for book likee objects I think my favorite word in the lingo ignota is zenin for spiral staircase zenin the word seems to be twisting in upon itself the lingu ignota also just runs a wide swath of words for igon for God to pinia for for Snot kinon for Pope Mia for a flea and even dilans for sword and brick zens for beer DUIs for devil and scin for Exorcist which is actually the same word for flame in the linga ignota but let's take a look at the only actual text composed by Hildegard in the lingua ignota that has survived down to this day it's actually one of her Symphonia and you can listen to it online if you like but it reads oh or Ecclesia AR prto or 2 calmia stigmat Orum o 2m in altoo szata GMA here we basically have a Latin text peppered with words from the lingua ignota although only one of those words l f actually appears in the suaria and notice here that it has a the Latin ending for some reason who knows the text for this song actually appears twice in the reason codex and once with a Latin gloss over the words in the lingua ignota so we do kind of get some sense of what this means the fact that none of the other words appear in the sumaria May indicate that again the liua ignota was actually much larger than it now appears so how might we translate this Symphonia the wonderful scholar Sarah hickley actually renders it as oh immense Church girded by Divine arms and ornamented in Yasin Thou Art the fragrance or fumigation of the wounds of people in the city of knowledge oh oh Thou Art the anointed or Thou Art the adorned in sounds on high and art a glittering gem it's positively beautiful now there is a lot going on here for example the word translated as immense seems to actually have its root in the linga osa's word Ori which is the word for an oak tree and I'll put a link over in the description if you want to hear the song itself it's really beautiful hillard's music is rather extraordinary for lots of reasons especially if your ears are mostly trained for hearing you know regular old plain chant get these weird scales in hildegard's music which are sometimes positively alarming and hauntingly beautiful clearly the sumaria is not exhaustive of the richness imagined by the lingua ignota by hildar it's also worth noting that Hildegard also brought forth a script apparently for writing the lingua ignota these are the litera ignota are the unknown letters and they do represent the standard set of medieval letters but they occupy a larger textual footprint on the page than the early Gothic script of that time it's kind of mysterious where hild deard may have gotten the inspiration for the actual shapes of these letters they may have come from again mystical visions that seems like the the most obvious answer but everything from Greek minuscule to tyronia notes to paleo Hebrew has been argued it's not paleo Hebrew it seems to me that it's just as likely that hild theard came up with it she was incredibly brilliant and the script could have flowed from her own mystical Visions further I don't really see the liter eyes having an especially high caligraphic value they're not especially beautiful and there's something actually a bit clumsy and disunified about the script it leads to my paleo graphic eye to my eye they look a bit like the Myriad Latin abbreviations of that period but again if Hilgard said they came in a mystical Vision well I'd say they they came in a mystical Vision so why did hild deard bring forth this language and its accompanying letters there are handful of theories and I want to touch on a few of them the earliest theory is also actually the stupidest that it was actually wasn't the work of hild deard at all it's not hildegard's lingu ignoto the this project just struck an early generation of Scholars as so absolutely weird to their mind that it didn't fit with the otherwise brilliant prophetic and scientific works that she had produced further there's actually just a longstanding idea that language in general is linked with maleness and the invention of a language just seemed out of place for a medieval woman that's their argument a woman couldn't have made up a language early Scholars actually reasoned that it was vmar Hildegard secretary had invented it for some otherwise unknown or ar reason now this position has been rejected for quite a while now but it can show even very good Scholars can have extremely stupid prejudices and it can actually cause them to misread and misinterpret the data right in front of them Hildegard says she brought it forth why not just believe her oh right she's a medieval woman the second idea is a lingua ignota as a result of glossolalia or speaking speaking in tongues or xenoglossia speaking in languages that are unknown to the speaker much akin to hildegard's actual later contemporary Elizabeth of shaow and today's Pentecostal Christians and many other Mystics who speak in languages either unknown to them or other forms of linguistic Outburst after all hildar did experience profound Visions recorded in her three major mystical texts now the problem with this theory is that there's no explicit link made between the mystical text and the lingua ignota and hilard does state that she never Ed into any kind of Trance unlike some of like the other Visions with the lingua ignota material so it's not a great link further the lingu Nota doesn't exhibit the kind of phonal pattern such as echoism where clusters of sounds are repeated over and over and over again or small phonal segments that are sort of again repeated that's the kind of thing that you typically hear here are from a person engaging in glossolalia so it just doesn't come across to the ear as glossolalia again it's also fused with a bit of German and Latin a third theory is that it's just Supernatural in origin in fact Hildegard herself clearly believed this and she actually wrote to the pope saying and it was said to that one Hildegard you have brought forth this language shown to you from above not following that of a human creation for it was not given to you in a customary way he who has the file does not neglect to polish it into s sound fit for men now it's not exactly clear what that last line of this passage is meant to show but it clearly displays that hild guard regarded the the linga ignota as having Supernatural divine origins so even writing to the pope she said it didn't come from me it came from God so who are we to doubt her other possibilities are that hild deard brought forth the language to reach back to a pure kind of adamic preall language which can best be used to worship God directly this was a pretty big interest of the time especially later into the Renaissance interestingly about this theory is that the list of various sins and sinners along with the words for things that typically were thought of as inherently bad in the Middle Ages such as the genitals and well poop further why would a preall language actually have so many words for diseases those didn't exist until sin happened and there are over 15 different name diseases in the sumaria another Theory actually links the linga ignota with hildegard's concept of veriditas or The Greening power are the ever new Vitality of metaphysical existence this concept abounds in her thinking as the possibility of constant renewal growth blossoming and creativity it's possible that Hildegard actually brought forth the lingua ignota as an extension of her General creative blossoming from science to prophecy to community and finally to language itself I find this Theory pretty compelling and quite lovely but I'd also want to Nuance it just ever so slightly specifically I'd like to situate the language both as a kind of mystical production again without judging whether that mystical Origins lie with Hildegard or with the supernatural Divine world or both somehow but again by situating the linga ignota in the general career of Hildegard at that time as we noted just a bit ago Hildegard founded her own Convent at the then extremely remote area at robertsburg in 1150 founding the order was extremely difficult especially given the aristocratic order origins of many of the nuns there they did all that manual labor themselves and these periods of extreme isolation and adversity I think would create an enormous sense of solidarity to actually make it work you would need something to give you some kind of core psychological sense of solidarity and what does that more than a shared secret language and that idea of a shared secret language one divinely revealed by Hildegard is a powerful social ual connecting tissue this would also explain the types of words found in the limber ignota it's just literally a list of a thousand words which more or less describe the world around the convent and allow them to communicate In Worship in communal acts of linguistic mysticism the irony of the word mystical here is interesting it literally means to seal the lips yet hildegard's great genius is a mysticism that is not only ineffable but it quite literally allows for a new kind of speech much in line with hildegard's Devotion to the concept of veriditas or metaphysical renewal of course we're never going to know why belinga ignota was prata brought forth but we are lucky that we're living in an era of plentiful constructed languages conlangs from tolken to Klingon to dothi that we can allow us to explore the Curious lingua ignota both in the sumaria and in the music that's now nearly a thousand years old those con Langs can give us a glimpse into why this language may have been constructed but if you're interested in the lingua ignoto the absolutely best text is also very expensive hooray academic publishing Sarah higley's work on the lingua ignota is a thoughtful and respectful treatment of the theory of language the cultural and historical situation for the production of the lingua ignota and a careful treatment and publication of the suaria itself again it's pretty pricey you can get it through L but it is the book to read on the lingua ignota also you got to check out hillard's music you can listen to all of it on YouTube there's lots of different videos containing her music it is wonderful in different recordings you can listen to some of those great flights of sounds as their composition will often just jump several octaves unlike much of the plain chant of the time it can be a little jarring if not beautiful hild theard the John cold train a plane chant if you're C curious about her mystical works you can also pick up the addition of the skias in the classics of Western spirituality series though I will warn you the text is pretty difficult to get into it very much reads like the prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible and despite its I don't know amazingness it can be a bit of a slog mystical yes exciting not always so much penguin also publishes a great selection of her works as well if you want to pick up a wide range of her things both those books are really affordable unlike the other academic Publishers the thetic biography of hild deard is also really wonderful to read and it shows just how much of a powerful Visionary leader he theard was in a world dominated by extremely powerful men she really held her own she's amazing lastly the illuminations of hild deard of beinging in which are actually sadly lost but were copied at an early Point by Matthew Fox or a collection of those very powerful visual Miniatures uh of medieval little medieval paintings which illustrate her visions and are amazing of course this will not be the only episode on hild theard of bingan in fact I want to turn back to episodes on her scientific text along with her mystical Visions she even had mystical Revelations of exorcism rituals which can be found in her letters and she even corresponded at that time with the other great Mystic of her generation the cister Syrian co-founder of the Knights Templar Bernard of clairo who Le needs at least few episodes himself but more hild theard content to come until then I'm Justin Sledge and thank you for watching esoterica where we explore the Arcane in history philosophy and religion

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Published: Fri Jan 05 2024