‘Nisi per nomina’: language as the medium of thought in Hildegard of Bingen’s thinking

This article analyses how language emerges as the medium of thought in the course of Hildegard of Bingen’s writing. The article claims that the role in which language functions here is new and can be read as an answer to new intellectual developments. At the same time, the epistemology that emerges from this analysis opposes itself decidedly to the emergent scholastic philosophies and places itself squarely in the monastic tradition of using rationality to lead a moral life. The article suggests that when Hildegard situates her discussion of language in a cognitive frame and attributes to words the key role in human understanding, she is reacting to a perceived threat in the intellectual field. Her theory of language uses the most traditional forms of monastic knowledge, notably exegesis, to reclaim language as the ageold monastic form of knowing which it is. Yet in doing so, the discussion is transferred to new contexts and takes on a new form.