Hildegard of Bingen and Her New Language

The myth or reality of Hildegard of Bingen speaking in tongues.

Hildegard of Bingen was a remarkable twelfth-century German abbess–a rock star in her time. She even invented a primitive language for her convent. Was it glossolalia, speaking in tongues, singing in tongues, or jubilation?

She is a figure whom some academic Pentecostal whisper support. They allude that Hildegard was part of a tradition passed to them.

An examination reveals that her speaking or singing in tongues or similar rites is a myth. It has nothing to do with ecstasy and everything about her intellectual creativity. She did invent a primitive language, but it was not glossolalia.

Of course, readers of the Gift of Tongues Project won’t accept such a brief explanation. A more detailed description follows.

Read more

Perceptions of Pentecost Through the Ages

An infographic that outlines the history of Pentecost from inception until today.

The graphic contains the significant four streams of thought throughout the centuries: The Catholic, Traditional Protestant, Conservative Protestant, and the Glossolalia Stories.

There is a dominant assumption that speaking in tongues died out in the early church and then reappeared with the Pentecostal awakening in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Not true. Almost every generation has wanted to claim Pentecost for themselves throughout history.

See the following paths of tongues through the centuries for details.

Poster on the different perceptions of Pentecost through the ages

Read more

A Jewish-Greek Perspective on the Tongues of Corinth

The following is a journey into identifying speaking in tongues through Hebrew and Greek Jewish traditions. This is an introduction to a series of articles devoted to this subject. Researching Jewish traditions about speakers and interpreters has uncovered two very important customs that are so close to Paul’s narrative that it would be hard to …

Read more

A History of Other Tongues in the English Bible infographic

The following infographic was created to describe why other tongues, otherwise known as strange tongues or unknown tongues was added to I Corinthians. The results may surprise many observers — this idiom was an English Bible translation phenomenon that started in the 1500s.

Read more

Technical Notes on Francis Xavier speaking in tongues

The following are quotes from the principal sources on the real Francis Xavier and the legend of his speaking in tongues. This is a quotes only document — a comparative analysis of all this information is in the final stages and will be posted as a separate article.

The debate and controversy that surrounded St. Francis Xavier’s alleged speaking in tongues was a source of internal friction within Catholicism, especially the among the Jesuits themselves, and a rallying point for Protestants. The real Francis Xavier did not speak in tongues, but the legend of Francis did.

How this legend began and grew is an interesting and complex story.

This leads into a journey about how Medieval Catholics viewed speaking in tongues; what it meant to them, how it was applied, and the politics that surrounded this practice.

The legend of Francis Xavier speaking in tongues ranks within the top five themes throughout the two-thousand-year history of the christian doctrine of tongues. There is no doubt that this legend is the most complex one out of any documents in the Gift of Tongues Project. There are numerous reasons why the mystery of Francis Xavier is difficult. The original documentation is multilingual; spanning Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Latin, and French. The subject is wrapped in Medieval Catholicism, which has its own unique history, customs, personalities and procedures that outsiders such as myself have a difficult time to grasp. Xavier’s gift of tongues is deeply embedded with international and national politics. The topic is shrouded in religious symbols and shifts into the Protestant realm where Rationalists especially took critical aim. It spans across continents and new worlds that most Europeans hardly knew at the time. The maps, names and locations mentioned in the texts are far from the modern English mind.

This article is produced to meet a requirement of the Gift of Tongues Project which is the digital capturing of source texts. The following are actual quotes from testimonies, writers, and publications that highly influenced and perpetuated this myth. These are actual quotes with little or no commentary from myself relating to Xavier speaking in tongues. They are organized according to date; from the earliest publications shortly after Xavier’s death, all the way into the twentieth-century. The Italian, Spanish and Portuguese originals are not digitally captured because I have no knowledge of these languages or the ability to do data-entry in them. However, links to the original text along with an English translation is supplied where appropriate.

This file is designed for the researcher, not for the casual reader. This is the longest article found in the Gift of Tongues Project because of the amount of source material. It may take a few moments to load the full contents into the browser, please be patient.

TOC

  • Pedro de Ribadeneira
  • Giovanni Pietro Maffei
  • Horatius Tursellinus
  • João de Lucena
  • The Book Monumenta Xaveriana:
    • Emanuel Fernandez
    • Thomas Vaz
    • Antonio Peirera
    • Pope Urban VIII
  • Daniello Bartoli
  • Dominique Bouhours
  • Pope Benedict XIV
  • John Douglas
  • Hugh Farmer
  • Charles Butler
  • Henry James Coleridge
  • Andrew Dickson White
  • A Jesuit response to Andrew Dickson White
  • Edith Anne Steward
  • James Brodrick
  • Georg Schurhammer
    • Volume II
    • Volume IV

Read more