Two Auditionary Prophetesses Facing Scholars: Hildegard of Bingen and Elise Müller

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What is the power of a woman who hears voices in the face of artistic and political authorities? The Rhenish abbess Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was a visionary and “auditionary” prophetess. Her music is still sung, and her voice translated into all languages, even in the feminist journal Heresies. She conveyed a message from another dimension, attested by male authorities (abbots and a pope). The Geneva medium Elise Müller (1861-1929), known by the heteronym Hélène Smith, also had visions and heard voices that dictated her drawings and paintings of Mars, Ultra-Mars, and the Holy Land. She conveyed messages she did not claim authorship of, controlled and doubted by multiple male authorities. These two anachronistic artists, separated by eight centuries, transmitted their voices in the interstices of male control and the definitions of art and vision.