This book considers visions in the literature of medieval Europe with particular reference to visions that can be considered to be of the Divine Feminine in a variety of forms including Wisdom (Sapientia), Philosophia and Natura amongst others.

This thesis provides the first comparative analysis situating the chants of Hildegard von Bingen within the mid-12th century Cistercian liturgical reform. In applying Cistercian theory, a clear distinction between the melodies written before and after Hildegard’s move to the Rupertsberg is exposed. In practice, her later chants demonstrate shared compositional strategies and motifs with the chants composed under the Cistercian reform, as demonstrated by antiphonals from the third quarter of the 12th century. Moreover, cross-referencing subjects represented within the Dendermonde Codex with those feasts and commemorations added to the Cistercian calendar between 1150 and 1175 suggests that the liturgy celebrated at the Rupertsberg was Cistercian influenced. A review of Hildegard’s correspondence in her later years suggests that she intended the Cistercian liturgy to continue after her death.

Hildegard of Bingen and Hermann of Carinthia are two unlikely candidates for study: one being a unlearned abbess, the other a professional member of elite, male literate class. Yet despite coming from very dissimilar backgrounds, both propose a cosmologies in which Neoplatonic divine love serves as the binding glue of the cosmos. This essay explores takes divine love as point of comparison and explores its role through cosmological structure, music and the creation of man, in Hildegard's visionary works, 'Scivias' and 'Book of Divine Works', and Hermann's philosophical tract, De Essentiis.