Published in Senses and sensibilities in classical and medieval worlds

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Several studies on the visions of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) emphasize their "otherness" with respect to the sensible world and the bodily experience. For some years, though, also the importance of the sensory language in religious texts has been highlighted. This paper explores the sense metaphors, particularly the taste metaphors, in Hildegard's first visionary work, Scivias. In this writing, she associates the taste of sweetness as well as food itself mainly with two subjects: the sin and Christ. This use of taste metaphors has biblical and patristic backgrounds. 12th Century authors like the Cistercian Bernhard of Clairvaux and the Benedictines Honorius Augustodunensis and Rupert of Deutz use as well taste metaphors to illustrate the fall into sin and the return to God through Christ. Thus, the sense of taste seems to offer them a basis for understanding human condition. Furthermore, the use of taste-metaphoric reveals the possibility of experience the divine by means of the sensibility of the human body.