ABSTRACT
In everything from hymn to musical drama, practical medicine to abstract theological commentary, personal letters to dramatic exorcistic ritual, Hildegard von Bingen celebrates harmony. So did many of her contemporaries. Medieval thought paired both likely and unlikely to imagine a unified and ordered cosmos, with God as the author, the architect, the ultimate composer. Medieval minds brought together God and man, angel and devil, Good and Bad, healthy and sick, life and death (Pawlik 13) and the topic addressed here, body and soul. Yet many medieval writers, though preoccupied with the relationship between the body and the soul, saw that relationship as a primarily antagonistic one. As debate more than dialogue, animosity more than reciprocity. 1 From medieval to modern times, a similarly problematic relationship has existed between poetry and science, one that was perhaps intensified as university disciplines were defined in the Middle Ages.
