Today marks the death of Hildegard von Bingen, one of the greatest women of history. Receiving next to no formal education in her youth, she became a polymath and the author of books on herbal medicine, the natural sciences, theology, and music. Hildegard invented her own alphabet. She composed what is arguably the first opera and certainly the first morality play, the Ordo Virtutum, as well as countless other pieces of liturgical music and poetry.

Hildegard also dictated three books of visions, of which the first is the most famous. Called the Scivias (short for scito vias Domini, know the ways of the Lord), the book is 150,000 words long and contains 35 miniature illustrations. She traveled as a preacher, a feat unparalleled for a woman of her time. She corresponded with and counseled popes, emperors, and other theologians like Bernard of Clairvaux. And while doing all this she was the abbess of a thriving convent in Germany.

Much of Hildegard’s theological work, especially as expressed in her music and poetry, speaks of viriditas. Literally meaning greenness, Hildegard used the term as a way of describing the fruitfulness of a soul growing in God, particularly the fruitfulness that comes from virginity. Her music, visions, and art are filled with strange beauty and deep orthodox faith.

For those interested in Hildegard’s music, I highly recommend the impresssive recordings made by Sequentia, as well as Anonymous 4’s 11,000 Virgins: Chants for the Feast of St. Ursula. And for those interested in Hildegard’s art, here are a depiction of the Holy Trinity and an illustration of Hildegard receiving visions with her copyist Volmar looking on.

A few years ago, a graduate student in English was trying to explain to me one of the latest fads in literary criticism, the History of the Book. Historians of the Book, he said, study the making and circulation of early manuscripts, including their interplay with socio-econo-politco-colonial-technological-transgender-hegemonic factors, to put it briefly. Literary science, is what I call it, because facts and statistics are key.

“Don’t you ever read the texts themselves?” I asked my scholar-friend. “Do you ever just enjoy the words and stories of Dickens or Milton or Shakespeare?” He didn’t miss a beat: “Of course. That helps you understand why the publisher laid out the pages as he did; that helps you understand how the text was received.” Well, of course.

So I stammered around, talking about literature illuminating the world, history, life, and oneself. About literature showing me love and hate, war and marriage, foreign places and my own mind. I talked about enjoying what I read. “But, Amanda,” he interrupted, “you don’t study literature to learn reading appreciation. It’s about scholarship!” And I didn’t know what to say, except that appreciative understanding didn’t sound so silly to me.

“Read him, therefore; and again and again,” wrote Shakespeare’s first editors and fellow players, John Heminge and Henry Condell. “And if then you do not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger, not to understand him.” The literary scientist can teach us to appreciate the editorial influence of Heminge and Condell. If only he followed their advice . . .

On that note, here is a very good address on “Why Read Shakespeare?” or, for that matter, why read any literary work of great of value.

Britain’s House of Lords expelled most of its hereditary lords in 1999. This may well have been a very good thing on balance, but as The Economist shows, it did have the regrettable effect of making regions outside of London “more marginalized than ever.”

Those old dukes may have lacked the common touch, but many of them lived outside of London. And indeed, I expect that it was a matter of pride (for those who still took their titles seriously) to cultivate regional consciousness–to know what was thought and felt in regions where their family once had true dominion.

Now the lords are mainly appointed politicians clustered in London. There is a movement afoot to make the House more representative by making it “a body that is mainly or entirely elected.” A recent white paper “outlined various electoral systems, all based on regional or sub-regional constituencies.” But it seems likely that non-Londoners will often have to make their pick among carpetbagging politicos from the capital.

This situation highlights an interesting fact about modern liberal democracies. Egalitarian rationalizing of political institutions generally leads to increased centralization and the creation of a homogeneous political class. We come to settle for a superficial diversity that is actually less representative of the range of views, interests and experiences in a society than the non-liberal institutions we impatiently destroy. Our rulers may be democratically elected and come in all the hues of the rainbow, but this counts for little if they all have the habits, attitudes, and experiences of urban political elites.

A new hymn for the new messiah, courtesy of Mark Shea:

I, the Lord of sea and sky,
I have heard my people cry.
All the sick and unemployed,
My hand will save.
I, the last, best hope on earth,
I’ll increase our nation’s worth.
I will make our planet heal
I promise change . . .

Chorus:
Here I am, folks. It is I, folks
I received your call at 3am.
I’ll be your Lord, please elect me.
I will drag your nation to the left.

I, the Lord of “yes, we can”,
I am more than just a man.
I would save them from themselves.
They vote McCain.
I will end the oceans’ swell,
Keep our planet cool as well.
Keep my teleprompter near.
Just to be safe . . .

(Chorus)

I, the Lord who fears small towns,
And the thought of kids with Down’s.
From religion and from guns.
My hand will save.
I will serve the common good,
Like a twisted Robin Hood.
Put your faith in government,
And vote for me!

(Chorus)

It is good to be skeptical of Sen. Obama’s promise to lead this country beyond the “old divisions,” as though the fierce partisanship of, say, the Culture Wars were fueled by pure spite. As many commentators have said, this “beyondism” is itself just another partisan ploy: “End this ugly conflict between us by giving me what I want.”

Of course the ploy doesn’t work if people realize what you are doing. The beyondist must appear to honor and transcend the interests of all parties. This usually ends in incoherence and paralysis.

And incoherence and paralysis is what I most fear from an Obama presidency. Even if the Republicans were effectively marginalized, such that the administration would not even need to feign concern for their views and interests, the Democrats’ internal divisions might be enough to stall many important initiatives.

Education policy provides a good example. As Charles Upton Sahm at City Journal says, Obama appears to be the reformist camp of the Democratic Party. These reformers have made the right sounds about merit pay, charter schools, parent choice etc. Political opponents of a more libertarian cast of mind might think that they don’t go far enough, but even they might accept a clear and workable policy that significantly improves on the status quo.

The trouble, of course, is that the Democratic Party is beholden to the teachers unions. Obama’s reformist ideas have earned him the unions’ dislike, but he apparently does not have the courage to risk losing their “tepid support” by more full-throated and unequivocal statements. He has tempered his dangerous proposals with “anti-reform bromides.” In a recent speech, Obama:

decr[ied] “teaching to the test”–a slap at high-stakes testing and the emphasis on results under NCLB. Even more worrisome was Obama’s statement that he envisioned a future in which “teachers are less a source of knowledge than a coach for how to use it”–a favorite talking point of anti-reform education professors who believe that imparting knowledge is not a teacher’s primary job. He also continued to water down his stance on merit pay by suggesting that we “find ways to increase teachers’ pay that are developed with teachers, and not imposed on them.” Translation: big increase in pay, tiny increase in accountability.

Furthermore, Obama (unlike McCain) has yet to endorse the Education Equity Project’s Statement of Principles, a document which seeks to bring to the specific challenge of education that no-nonsense attitude that Obama has claimed would mark his administration in general. Why should we think that his claim is anything but rhetoric?

Gov. Palin’s brash decisiveness makes me nervous–I’m not sure that we can trust someone who honestly never blinks. But Sen. Obama’s chronic waffling and hesitation seems much the greater liability.