Hildegard of Bingen

A medieval illumination showing Hildegard von Bingen and the monk Volmar.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), also known as Blessed Hildegard and Saint Hildegard, was a German religious teacher, prophetess, and abbess. At a time when women were often not recognized in the public and religious sphere she was also an author, counselor, artist, physician, healer, dramatist, linguist, naturalist, philosopher, poet, political consultant, visionary, and composer of music. She wrote theological, naturalistic, botanical, medicinal, and dietary texts, also letters, liturgical songs, poems, and the first surviving morality play, while supervising brilliant miniature illuminations. She was also called, the "Sibyl of the Rhine" for her prophetic visions and received many notables asking for her guidance.

Only two other women come close to rivaling the fame of Hildegard during this period: the abbess, Herrad of Landsberg, born about 1130 and author of the scientific and theological compendium "Hortus Deliciarum" or "Garden of Delights;" abbess Heloise, 1101-1162 (of Heloise and Abelard fame), a brilliant scholar of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew who had a reputation for intelligence and insight.

Biography

A sickly but gifted child

Hildegard's preaching tours

Hildegard was born into a family of free nobles in the service of the counts of Sponheim, close relatives of the Hohenstaufen emperors. She was the tenth child (the 'tithe' child) of her parents, and was sickly from birth. From the time she was very young, Hildegard experienced visions.

The one surviving tale of Hildegard's childhood involves a prophetic conversation that she held with her nurse, in which she reportedly described an unborn calf as "white... marked with different colored spots on its forehead, feet and back." The nurse, amazed with the detail of the young child's account, told Hildegard's mother, who later rewarded her daughter with the calf, whose appearance Hildegard had accurately predicted. (Hildegard of Bingen: A Visionary Life, by Sabina Flanagan).

Hildegard's acestic teacher

Perhaps due to Hildegard's visions, or as a method of political positioning, Hildegard's parents, Hildebert and Mechthilde, dedicated her at the age of eight to become a nun as a tithe to the Church. Hildegard was placed in the care of Jutta, a wealthy anchoresswho was the sister of Count Meinhard of Sponheim. Juttas cell was located outside the Disibodenberg monastery in the Bavarian region of today's Germany. Jutta was very popular and acquired many followers, such that a small nunnery sprang up around her.

Due to ill health, Hildegard was left alone a lot. During this time of religious loneliness she received many visions. She says of herself:

Up to my fifteenth year I saw much, and related some of the things seen to others, who would inquire with astonishment, whence such things might come. I also wondered and during my sickness I asked one of my nurses whether she also saw similar things. When she answered no, a great fear befell me. Frequently, in my conversation, I would relate future things, which I saw as if present, but, noting the amazement of my listeners, I became more reticent.

Eventually, Hildegard decided that keeping her visions to herself was the wise choice. She confided them only to Jutta, who in turn told the monk Volmar, Hildegard's tutor and, later, her scribe. Throughout her life, Hildegard continued to have visions.

Called to write

In 1141, she received a call from God, "Write down that which you see and hear." She was hesitant to record her visions, and soon became physically ill. In her first theological text, 'Scivias, or "Know the Ways," Hildegard describes her inner struggle concerning God's instruction:

I didn’t immediately follow this command. Self-doubt made me hesitate. I analyzed others’ opinions of my decision and sifted through my own bad opinions of myself. Finally, one day I discovered I was so sick I couldn’t get out of bed. Through this illness, God taught me to listen better. Then, when my good friends Richardis and Volmar urged me to write, I did. I started writing this book and received the strength to finish it, somehow, in ten years. These visions weren’t fabricated by my own imagination, nor are they anyone else’s. I saw these when I was in the heavenly places. They are God’s mysteries. These are God’s secrets. I wrote them down because a heavenly voice kept saying to me, 'See and speak! Hear and write!' (Hildegard of Bingen: A Spiritual Reader)

Upon Jutta's death in 1136, Hildegard was unanimously elected as "magistra," or leader of her community. The election would lead to the significant move, amid great opposition, of 20 members of her community to her newly-formed monastery, St. Rupertsberg at Bingen on the Rhine in 1150, where she became abbess.

The twelth century was a time of schisms and religious foment, when controversies attracted followings. Hildegard preached against schismatics, especially the Cathars.

Communication with St. Bernard

In 1147, now confident about the divine source of her visions, Hildegard was still concerned about whether they should be published, so she wrote to the future Saint Bernard, abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux. Her remarkable first letter to the saint has been preserved:

...Father, I am greatly disturbed by a vision which has appeared to me through divine revelation, a vision seen not with my fleshly eyes but only in my spirit. Wretched, and indeed more than wretched in my womanly condition, I have from earliest childhood seen great marvels which my tongue has no power to express, but which the Spirit of God has taught me that I may believe. Steadfast gentle father, in your kindness respond to me, your unworthy servant, who has never, form her earliest childhood, lived one hour free from anxiety. In your piety and wisdom look in your spirit, as you have been taught by the Holy Spirit, and from your heart bring comfort to your handmaiden.

Through this vision which touches my heart and soul like a burning flame, teaching me profundities of meaning, I have an inward understanding of the Psalter, the Gospels, and other volumes. Nevertheless, I do not receive this knowledge in German. Indeed, I have no formal training at all, for I know how to read only on the most elementary level, certainly with no deep analysis. But please give me your opinion in this matter, because I am untaught and untrained in exterior material, but am only taught inwardly, in my spirit. Hence my halting, unsure speech...

Ecnouraged by Pope Eugenius

Bernard responded favorably, and when Hildegard's archbishop showed part of Scivias to Pope Eugenius, Bernard encouraged his fellow Cistercian to approve it. Eugenius encouraged Hildegard to finish her writings. With papal support, Hildegard was able to finish her Scivias ("Know the Ways of the Lord") in ten years and thus her importance spread throughout the region.

Many people from all parts of Germany sought her advice and wisdom both in corporal and spiritual ailments. Archbishop Heinrich of Mainz, Archbishop Eberhard of Salzburg and Abbot Ludwig of St. Eucharius at Trier visited her. St. Elizabeth of Schönau was a close friend and frequent visitor. Hildegard traveled to both of the houses of Disenberg and Eibingen and to Ingelheim to see Emperor Frederick. A vita of Hildegard was written by two monks, Godfrid and Theodoric (Patrologia Latina vol. 197).

Modern appraisal

Hildegard's vivid description of the physical sensations which accompanied her visions have been diagnosed by neurologists, including popular author Oliver Sacks, as symptoms of migraine. However, others argue that there is evidence that her migraines could have produced such vivied and varied religous visions.

Works

Music

"Universal Man" illumination from Hildegard's Liber divinorum operum, 1165

Attention in recent decades to women of the medieval Church has led to a re-popularization of Hildegard, particularly of her music. Approximately eighty compositions have survived, which is one of the largest repertoires among medieval composers. Among her better known works, 'Ordo Virtutum',' or "Play of the Virtues," is a morality play and an example of a rare and early oratorio for women's voices, with one male part, that of the Devil, who, because of his corrupted nature, cannot sing. The play has served as an inspiration and foundation to what later became known as opera. The oratorio was created, like much of Hildegard's music, for religious ceremonial performance by the nuns of her convent. Hildegard's music is described as monophonic; that is, designed for limited instrumental accompaniment and characterized by soaring soprano vocalizations. Hildegard, in fact, remains the first composer whose biography is known.

Scientific works

In addition to music, Hildegard also wrote medical, botanical and geological treatises, and she even invented an alternative alphabet. The text of her writing and compositions reveals Hildegard's use of this form of modified medieval Latin, encompassing many invented, conflated and abridged words. Due to her inventions of words for her lyrics and a constructed script, many conlangers (people immersed in specialized forms of symbolic communication) look upon her as a medieval precursor.

alphabet by Hildegard von Bingen, Litterae ignotae, which she used for her language Lingua Ignota

Visionary writings

She collected her visions into three books. The first and most important Scivias ("Know the Way") was completed in 1151. Liber vitae meritorum ("Book of Life's Merits") and De operatione Dei ("Of God's Activities") also known as Liber divinorum operum ("Book of Divine Works") followed. In these volumes, written over the course of her life until her death in 1179, she first describes each vision, then interprets them. The narrative of her visions was richly decorated under her direction, presumably drawn by other nuns in the convent, while transcription assistance was provided by the monk Volmar with pictures of the visions (see him portrayed on the right of the illustration at the top of the article). Her interpretations are usually quite traditionally Catholic in nature. The book was celebrated in the Middle Ages and printed for the first time in Paris in 1513.

In Scivias, Hildegard was one of the first to interpret the beast in the Book of Revelation as the Antichrist, a figure whose rise to power would parallel Christ's own life, but in a demonic form. For Hildegard, the source of the Antichrist's evil power lay in Judaism.

Mutterschaft aus dem Geiste und dem Wasser (Motherhood from the Spirit and the Water), 1165

Sexuality

Hildegard's writings maintain that virginity is the highest level of the spiritual life. However, she was also the first woman to record a treatise of feminine sexuality, providing scientific accounts of the female orgasm.

When a woman is making love with a man, a sense of heat in her brain, which brings with it sensual delight, communicates the taste of that delight during the act and summons forth the emission of the man's seed. And when the seed has fallen into its place, that vehement heat descending from her brain draws the seed to itself and holds it, and soon the woman's sexual organs contract, and all the parts that are ready to open up during the time of menstruation now close, in the same way as a strong man can hold something enclosed in his fist.

On the other hand, there are many instances, both in her letters and visions, which decry the misuse of carnal pleasures. In Scivias Book II Vision Six.78,

God united man and woman, thus joining the strong to the weak, that each might sustain the other. But these perverted adulterers change their virile strength into perverse weakness, rejecting the proper male and female roles, and in their wickedness they shamefully follow Satan, who in his pride sought to split and divide Him Who is indivisible. They create in themselves by their wicked deeds a strange and perverse adultery, and so appear polluted and shameful in My sight...

...a woman who takes up devilish ways and plays a male role in coupling with another woman is most vile in My sight, and so is she who subjects herself to such a one in this evil deed...

...And men who touch their own genital organ and emit their semen seriously imperil their souls, for they excite themselves to distraction; they appear to Me as impure animals devouring their own whelps, for they wickedly produce their semen only for abusive pollution...

...When a person feels himself disturbed by bodily stimulation let him run to the refuge of continence, and seize the shield of chastity, and thus defend himself from uncleanness." (translation by Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop).

Significance

Hildegardis-Codex, sogenannter Scivias-Codex, Szene: Das Weltall, The Universe, 1151

Hildegard was a powerful woman, who communicated with Popes such as Eugene III and Anastasius IV, statesmen, Abbot Suger, German emperors, Frederick I Barbarossa, and others, and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who advanced her work, at the behest of her abbot, Kuno, at the Synod of Trier in 1147 and 1148.

Many abbots and abbesses asked her for prayers and opinions on various matters. She traveled widely during her four preaching tours lasting over 13 years which she completed in 1171, at age 73, the only woman to have done so during the Middle Ages (see Scivias, tr. Hart, Bishop, Newman). She visited both men's and women's monasteries and urban Cathedrals to preach to both religious and secular clergy. Her longtime secretary, Volmer, died in 1173 yet she continued to write even after 1175.

Hildegard was one of the first souls for which the canonization process was officially applied, but the process took so long that four attempts at canonization (the last was in 1244, under Pope Innocent IV) were not completed, and she remained at the level of her beatification. She has been referred to as a saint by some, nonetheless, particularly in contemporary Rhineland, Germany.

Hildegard's name was taken up in the Roman martyrology at the end of the sixteenth century. Her feast day is September 17.

As Sister Judith Sutera, O.S.B., of Mount St. Scholastica explains:

For the first centuries, the ‘naming’ and veneration of saints was an informal process, occurring locally and operating locally. . . . When they began to codify, between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, they did not go back and apply any official process to those persons who were already widely recognized and venerated. They simply ‘grandfathered in’ anyone whose cult had been flourishing for 100 years or more. So many quite famous, ancient, and even non-existent saints who have had feast days and devotions since the apostolic era were never canonized per se.

When the convent in Rupertsberg was destroyed in 1632 the relics of the saint were brought to Cologne and then to Eibingen. Hildegard’s Parish and Pilgrimage Church house the relics of Hildegard, including an altar encasing her earthly remains, in Eibingen near Rüdesheim (on the Rhine). On July 2, 1900 the cornerstone was laid for a new convent of St. Hildegard, and the nuns from St. Gabriel's at Prague moved into their new home on September 17, 1904.

Further reading

Selected English Translations of Hildegard

• Baird, Joseph L. and Radd K. Ehrman, trans. The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen. Vol. I, 1994, II, 1998, and III, 2004. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0195168372

• Bingen, Hildegard. Secrets of God: Writings of Hildegard of Bingen. Shambhala, 1996. ISBN 978-1570621642

• Butcher, Carmen Acevedo. Incandescence: 365 Readings with Women Mystics. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2005. ISBN 978-1557254184

• Führkötter, Adelgundis, and James McGrath. The Life of Holy Hildegard by the Monks Gottfried and Theodoric. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1980.

• Hart, Columba and Jane Bishop, trans. Scivias. Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1990. ISBN 978-0809131303

• Hozeski, Bruce W., trans. The Book of the Rewards of Life (Liber vitae meritorum). New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0195113716

On Hildegard’s Illuminations

• Fox, Matthew. Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen. Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Company, 2002. ISBN 978-1879181977

Recordings of Hildegard’s Music (Discography)

• 900 Years: Hildegard von Bingen. Sequentia. Box Set (8 discs). RCA 77505, 1998.

• Page, Christopher, dir. A Feather on the Breath of God: Sequences and Hymns by Abbess Hildegard of Bingen. Gothic Voices, Emma Kirkby (soprano). Hyperion DCA 66039, 1981.

• Oak, Ellen. Hildegard of Bingen: The Harmony of Heaven. Bison Publications 1, 1996.

• Thornton, Barbara, dir. Hildegard von Bingen: Canticles of Ecstasy. Sequentia. Deutsche Harmonia mundi 05472-77320-2, 1994.

• Hildegard von Bingen: Heavenly Revelations. Oxford Camerata, dir. Jeremy Summerly. Naxos 8.550998, 1994.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Sweet, Victoria. Rooted in the Earth, Rooted in the Sky: Hildegard of Bingen and Premodern Medicine. New York: Routledge Press, 2006. ISBN 0-415-97634-0
• Baird, Joseph L. (trans.), Radd K. Ehrman. The letters of Hildegard of Bingen. New York : Oxford University Press, 3 vols., 1994-2004. ISBN 0-19-508937-5
• Baird, Joseph L. The Personal Correspondence of Hildegard of Bingen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-19-530823-9
• Hart, Mother Columba and Bishop, Jane. (1990). Scivias:The Classics of Western Spirituality. New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1990. ISBN 0-8091-3130-7
• Ekdahl Davidson, Audrey, ed. (1992). The "Ordo virtutum" of Hildegard of Bingen : critical studies. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1992. ISBN 1-879288-17-6
• Sweet, Victoria. Hildegard of Bingen and the Greening of Medieval Medicine. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 1999, 73:381-403.
• Flanagan, Sabina. Hildegard of Bingen, a Visionary Life. Routledge, London, 1989. ISBN 0-7607-1361-8
• Fox, Matthew. Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen. Santa Fe, N.M. : Bear & Co., 1985. ISBN 1-879181-97-5
• Hozeski, Bruce W., trans. Hildegard of Bingen : the Book of the rewards of life (Liber vitae meritorum). New York : Garland Pub., 1994. ISBN 0-19-511371-3
• Newman, Barbara. Sister of wisdom : St. Hildegard's theology of the feminine. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1987. ISBN 0-520-06615-4
• Newman, Barbara. God and the Goddesses. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-1911-2
• Ulrich, Ingeborg. Hildegard von Bingen: Mystikerin, Heilerin, Gefahrtin der Engel. Munich: Kosel, 1990. (German) ISBN 3-466-34254-6
• Weeks, Andrew. German mysticism from Hildegard of Bingen to Ludwig Wittgenstein : a literary and intellectual history. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. ISBN 0-7914-1419-1
• Burnett McInerney, Maud, ed. Hildegard of Bingen: A Book of Essays. New York: Garland Pub., 1998. ISBN 0-8153-2588-6
• Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990. ISBN 0-500-20354-7
• Harris, Anne Sutherland and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550-1950, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Knopf, New York, 1976. ISBN 0-394-73326-6
• Silvas, Anna. (trans). Jutta and Hildegard: the Biographical Sources (Brepols Medieval Women Series). Penn State University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-271-01954-9
• Boyce-Tillman, June. The Creative Spirit: Harmonious Living with Hildegard of Bingen, Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2000. ISBN 0-8192-1882-0

External links

• Hildegard of Bingen website at Johannes Gutenburg University, www.hildegard.org.. Retrieved April 21, 2007.
• New Advent's article on Hildegard of Bingen, www.newadvent.org.. Retrieved April 21, 2007.
• The Life and Works of Hildegard von Bingen, www.fordham.edu. Retrieved April 21, 2007.
• Biography and Prayers of Hildegard, www.poetseers.org. Retrieved April 21, 2007.
• Discography, www.medieval.org. Retrieved April 21, 2007.
• Church of St. Hildegard in Eibingen, www.eibingen.de (German). Retrieved April 21, 2007.

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