If you have visited the gemstone (crystal) cabinet, you may have noticed that there is a unicorn included as part of the cabinet. The unicorn hangs out on the gemstone cabinet in between its visits to our Christmas crib.

We added a unicorn to the crib, and to the Hildegard Haus shrine because the unicorn, for many artists and theologians in the Middle Ages – including St. Hildegard – served as a powerful image of Christ and purity.

In her work, Book of the Rewards of Life, (also called Book of Life’s Merits), St. Hildegard wrote the following: [In a vision] “I then saw that this man moved, as it were, complete in the four zones of the earth. And behold a unicorn appeared on his left thigh, licking his knee…” (264)

Explaining the vision, Hildegard wrote: “And a unicorn appears on his left thigh. This is the one who resisted the devil with his holy humanity and who struck the devil down with the sword of his chastity, clearly the Son of God who came in the form of a man. This unicorn is licking his knee. Receiving the power of judgment from God the Father, the Son of God cries out that the whole world shall be cleansed with fire, that it should be renewed… (265)

The altar cloth that you see in the one photo is a replica of one of the famous Unicorn Tapestries at the Met Cloisters in New York City. The unicorn in this tapestry has been interpreted as an image of the incarnation of Christ.

St. Hildegard lived at a time when mystery and magic still permeated the imagination.  The unicorns appears in several places in the collection of her letters. For example, around the year 1170, she wrote in a letter:

“Now you, O son of the ancient Father, look to the East for the Old and the New Law are both established in the one God, just as both the white and the red flower have but one root. And the unicorn came there, and, licking the pale flower, sucked out all its viridity and poured it into the red flower, and breathed the sweetest breath upon it, so that it might give forth the most fragrant of odors. Therefore, let no one be sluggish and so rebellious against the justice of God that he cut the red flower from that common root…” (Letter 365 to a Certain Person, 154)

In her work, Physica, she described in detail the unicorn including ways to use its liver and skin for medicine suggesting that there was a belief that they existed. Hildegard believed only a young maiden (a virgin) could attract a unicorn to her and she had to be of noble birth. With regard to where the unicorn got its mystical gifts, she wrote the following:

“Once a year it goes to the land that has the water of paradise. There it seeks the best plants, which it digs up with its hooves and eats. From them, it has great powers, but it still flees other animals. It has beneath its horn something as clear as glass, so that, in it, a person can look and see his own face, as if looking in a mirror.” (210-211)