In his lacrimis delectabar. Piangere e ridere in Ildegarda di Bingen

This article examines the meanings and functions of weeping and laughter in the work of Hildegard of Bingen through a multidisciplinary lens that includes lexical, medical, theological, and symbolic analysis. The twelfth-century Benedictine nun interprets these affective expressions as manifestations of the complex psychosomatic unity of the human being, positioned between fall and redemption, nature and grace. Weeping, addressed across her visionary, medical-scientific, and moral writings, assumes a wide range of meanings: from physiological symptom to sign of compunction, from ascetic tool to eschatological anticipation. Similarly, laughter is explored in its original ambivalence—as capable of expressing both Edenic joy and postlapsarian corruption—before being reconfigured as spiritual iucunditas, the fruit of a harmonious synergy between soul and body.\r\nHildegard sharply distinguishes between excessive, animalistic, and harmful laughter and the true joy that arises from spiritual integrity. In this framework, the author demonstrates how Hildegard’s anthropology—integral and dynamic—assigns tears and laughter a therapeutic, moral, and salvific function, in continuity with monastic tradition and within the broader cosmic vision of creation.