Hildegard von Bingen

German mystic and writer

• Born: 1098
• Birthplace: Bermersheim bei Alzey, Rheinhessen (now in Germany)
• Died: September 17, 1179
• Place of death: Rupertsberg bei Bingen, Rheinhessen (now in Germany)

The first major German mystic, Hildegard, in her prolific writings and extensive preaching, exerted a widespread influence on religious and political figures in twelfth century Europe.

Early Life

Born in 1098 in Bermersheim bei Alzey, Hildegard von Bingen (HIHL-deh-gahrd fuhn BIHN-gehn) was the tenth and last child of Hildebert von Bermersheim, a knight in the service of Meginhard, Count of Spanheim, and his wife, Mechthild. At her birth, her parents consecrated Hildegard to God as a tithe. As early as the age of three, Hildegard had her first vision, of a dazzling white light, which she was later to call the umbra viventis lucis (shadow of the living Light), which appeared to her as reflected in a fons vitae (shining pool). Other visions followed, along with accurate premonitions of the future. When she was eight years old, her parents entrusted her to the care of the learned Jutta of Spanheim, a holy anchoress attached to the Benedictine abbey of Mount Saint Disibode.

Hildegard’s visions continued during her adolescence, but, embarrassed when she began to realize that she was alone in seeing them, she began to keep them to herself, confiding only in Jutta. In spite of her ill health, Hildegard began her studies under Jutta, learning to read and sing Latin. Her further education was entrusted to the monk Volmar of Saint Disibode, who, over time, became her lifelong friend, confidant, and secretary. At age fourteen, she took vows and received the veil from Bishop Otto von Bamberg, the hermitage of Jutta having by this time attracted enough followers to become a community under the Rule of Saint Benedict.

The next two decades were formative years for Hildegard: She acquired an extensive knowledge of the Scriptures, the church fathers and later church writers, the monastic liturgy, science, medicine, and philosophy. From her later writings it is possible to trace specific writers she studied during this period: Saint Augustine, Boethius, Saint Isidore of Seville, Bernard Silvestris, Aristotle, Galen, Messahalah, Constantine the African, Hugh of Saint Victor, and Alberic the Younger. Meanwhile, she continued to experience the charisma of her mystical visions. When Jutta died in 1136, Hildegard, at thirty-eight, was unanimously elected abbess by the nuns of her community.

Life’s Work

The turning point in Hildegard’s life came in 1141, when she received a commandment from God: “Write, what you see and hear! Tell people how to enter the kingdom of salvation!” She initially went through a period of self-doubt: How could she, ego paupercula feminea forma (a poor little figure of a woman), be chosen as a mouthpiece for God? She questioned whether others would give credence to her visions. She finally confided fully in her confessor, the monk Godfrey, who referred the matter to his abbot, Kuno. Kuno ordered Hildegard to write down some of her visions, which he then submitted to the archbishop of Mainz. The archbishop determined that Hildegard’s visions were indeed divinely inspired, and Hildegard ultimately came to accept a view of herself as a woman chosen to fulfill God’s work.

A ten-year collaboration between Hildegard and her secretary Volmar began, as she dictated to him her principal work, Scivias (1141-1151; English translation, 1986), an abbreviation for nosce vias (Domini), or “know the ways of the Lord,” consisting of twenty-six visions dealing with the relationships and interdependence between the triune God and humans through the Creation, Redemption, and Church. The visions also contained apocalyptic prophecies and warnings, which would motivate Hildegard to begin an extensive correspondence of more than one hundred letters to popes, emperors, kings, archbishops, abbots, and abbesses; she also began to journey throughout Germany and France preaching against the abuses and corruption of the Church. As her visions led her to an active role in church and social reform, she came to accept her link with the tradition of the female prophets (Deborah, Olda, Hannah, and Elizabeth).

In 1147, when Pope Eugenius III held a synod in Trier, he appointed a commission to examine Hildegard’s writing. Bernard of Clairvaux, with whom Hildegard had corresponded, spoke affirmatively of her. Subsequently, in a letter to Hildegard, the pope approved her visions as authentic manifestations of the Holy Spirit and, warning her against pride, gave her apostolic license to continue writing and publishing. Hildegard, in return, wrote the pope a long letter urging him to work for reform in the Church and the monasteries. The woman who initially had felt timid serving as a mouthpiece for the Word of God was beginning to speak with the uncompromising sense of justice that was to characterize her prophetic and apostolic mission for the rest of her life.

With the pope’s endorsement of her visions, Hildegard’s renown and the number of postulants at her convent grew, and she determined to separate from the monastery of Saint Disibode and to found a new community at Rupertsberg, near Bingen, a site that had been revealed to her in a vision. Despite the objections of the monks of Saint Disibode and their abbot, Kuno, who would lose prestige and revenue with her departure, Hildegard used family connections with the archbishop of Mainz to secure the property and personally oversaw the construction of a convent large enough to house fifty nuns. In 1150, she moved to Rupertsberg with eighteen other nuns. As abbess, Hildegard managed to obtain exclusive rights to the Rupertsberg property from Abbot Kuno in 1155, and several years later it was arranged that she would respond directly to the archbishop of Mainz as her superior rather than to the abbot of Saint Disibode.

Under Hildegard’s leadership, the new community flourished, as did her own work and creative production. In 1151, she completed Scivias, concluding the work with a liturgical drama set to music, Ordo virtutum, the earliest known morality play and a dramatic work of considerable originality and merit. Between 1151 and 1158, seventy-seven individual hymns and canticles that she had written for her nuns were collected in a lyrical cycle entitled Symphonia harmonia caelestium revelationum (the harmonious symphony of heavenly revelations), which, according to Peter Dronke, contains “some of the most unusual, subtle, and exciting poetry of the twelfth century.” Her music, ranging in mood from tranquil lyricism to declamatory intensity, includes some of the finest songs written in the Middle Ages.

Hildegard, who in addition to her responsibilities as abbess served in the convent infirmary, commenced work on two books on natural history and medicine. Characterized by careful scientific observation, Hildegard’s medical and scientific studies contain the prototypes of some modern methods of diagnosis and anticipate certain later discoveries such as circulation of the blood and psychosomatic illness.

She also wrote a commentary on the Gospels, an explication of the Rule of Saint Benedict and one of the Athanasian Creed, and the lives of Saint Rupert and Saint Disibode.

It was primarily for her mystical trilogy that Hildegard was known in her day: that is, Scivias, a treatise on ethics entitled Liber vitae meritorum (1158-1163; book of life’s merits), and De operatione Dei (1163-1173; Book of Divine Works, 1987), a vast cosmology and theodicy. It is these works, together with her letters, that primarily account for the late twentieth century renaissance in Hildegard scholarship. The illuminated manuscript of Scivias that was prepared at her scriptorium in 1165 is of interest not only to modern theologians and art historians but also to the layperson desiring access to her prolific and sometimes abstruse work.

Known by her twelfth century contemporaries as the prophetissa Teutonica, or Sibyl of the Rhine, Hildegard continued, into her seventies and eighties, to travel widely in Germany and France, providing spiritual direction and preaching. Pilgrims flocked to her convent; her advice was sought by popes and archbishops, emperors and kings, religious and laypeople of all classes. Her influence in twelfth century Europe was considerable. Through the years, she corresponded with four popes Eugene III, Anastasius IV, Adrian IV, and Alexander III and with two German emperors, Conrad III and his son and successor Frederick I Barbarossa, whom she rebuked for supporting an antipope. She also sent letters to Henry II of England and his queen Eleanor, the divorced wife of Louis VII. She corresponded with Bernard of Clairvaux and preached his crusade in her travels. She corresponded continuously with the archbishop of Mainz and with bishops and clergy throughout Germany, the Low Countries, and Central Europe. Moreover, she maintained a personal correspondence with twenty-five abbesses of various convents. Constant and uncompromising themes in her letters were condemnation of the abuses and corruption within both church and secular government and the need for social justice, compassion, and wisdom.

The year before her death, when she was in her eighties, Hildegard faced a difficult ethical trial. Her community was placed under interdict for having buried in the convent cemetery a revolutionary youth who had been excommunicated. Hildegard refused to have the body exhumed and removed as ordered; instead, she blessed the grave with her abbatial staff and removed all traces of it. In her view, although the young man had been excommunicated, because he had been absolved and reconciled with the Church before dying, he merited a sacred burial. The interdict forbade the community to hear Mass, receive the Eucharist, or sing the Divine Office. As painful as the interdict was to Hildegard, her sense of justice and her fidelity to her “living Light,” no matter what the cost to her, led her to withstand the pressure to give in; she would not let the letter of the law stand before the spirit of the law. Hildegard wrote numerous letters of protest to the appropriate authorities, until finally her argument prevailed and the interdict was removed. Six months later, in 1179, she died.

Significance

The first major German mystic, Hildegard von Bingen has never been formally canonized (three proceedings were initiated in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but none was ever completed), yet she is included in the martyrologies and in the Acta Sanctorum under the title “saint,” and in 1979 Pope John Paul II, on the 800th anniversary of Hildegard’s death, referred to her as “an outstanding saint.” Through her preaching, writings, and correspondence, she actively influenced the decisions and policies of religious and political leaders of her day. The founder of the Rhineland mystic movement, she influenced later medieval mystics, including Mechthild of Magdeburg and Meister Eckhart. Further, the themes of ecology, social responsibility, the co-creativity of human beings, feminine aspects of the divine, and the interconnectivity of the cosmos in her visionary writings have been noted by Creation-centered theologians in the twentieth century.

Although philosophically Abbess Hildegard accepted the Catholic medieval view of woman’s subordination to man, based on the doctrine of the Fall, her visions encouraged her to become highly independent in her thinking, actions, and creations. She made significant contributions in her medical writings. Her poetry, music, and liturgical drama Ordo virtutum are original in form and ideas. Her visionary works, while they also provide a compendium of contemporary thought, are a unique phenomenon in twelfth century letters, as are the manuscript illuminations that accompany them. Considering the originality of her visionary cosmology, it is not surprising that Hildegard von Bingen has been compared to both Dante and William Blake.

Bibliography

Bobko, Jane, comp. and ed. Vision: The Life and Music of Hildegard von Bingen. New York: Penguin Studio, 1995. Focuses on Hildegard’s music. Bibliographical references.

Craine, Renate. Hildegard: Prophet of the Cosmic Christ. New York: Crossroad, 1997. Covers the life and works of Hildegard with emphasis on her multiple roles as visionary, mystic, author, artist, musician and composer, holistic healer, theologian, and Benedictine abbess. Hildegard did not accept her gift until the age of forty-two but still left behind a vast legacy that is discussed in this revealing biography.

Dronke, Peter. Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages: New Departures in Poetry, 1000-1150. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970. An excellent study of the poetic imagery of Hildegard’s lyrics, with numerous textual examples in the Latin original and in translation. Analyzes the Ordo virtutum as a fusion between a morality play and the expression of mystical experience. Contains the complete Latin text of the Ordo virtutum and the musical transcriptions of two of Hildegard’s melismatic sequences from the Symphonia harmoniae caelestium revelationum.

Dronke, Peter. Women Writers of the Middle Ages. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984. A substantial study of the nature of Hildegard’s visionary experiences and their influence on the development of her cosmological thought. Focuses on Hildegard’s autobiographical writings, her letters, and her medical treatises, including excerpts from selected texts and letters in the Latin original and in translation.

Hildegard of Bingen. Book of Divine Works, with Letters and Songs. Translated and edited by Matthew Fox. Santa Fe, N.Mex.: Bear, 1987. Contains translations of important primary source material: Hildegard’s third major visionary opus, forty-two selected letters; and twelve songs. Also contains a good summary introduction to Hildegard’s life and works.

Hildegard of Bingen. Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen. Edited by Matthew Fox. Santa Fe, N.Mex.: Bear, 1985. Color reproductions of the illuminations of Hildegard’s visionary manuscripts, accompanied by extensive commentary on the themes of her cosmology.

Hildegard of Bingen. Scivias. Translated by Bruce Hozeski. Santa Fe, N.Mex.: Bear, 1986. The translated text of Hildegard’s major visionary cycle, accompanied by black-and-white illustrations of the text’s illuminations. Introductory essays include a biographical sketch, a review of her work, and an analysis of the structure and contents of Scivias.

Kraft, Kent. “The German Visionary: Hildegard of Bingen.” In Medieval Women Writers, edited by Katharina Wilson. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984. An interpretive study of significant events in Hildegard’s life and their influence on her works. Provides a summary review and analysis of her important creative work, followed by selected excerpts from her works.

Lagorio, Valerie M. “The Medieval Continental Women Mystics: An Introduction.” In An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe, edited by Paul E. Szarmach. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984. An insightful survey of important European women mystics from Hildegard of Bingen in the twelfth century to Saint Catherine of Siena in the fourteenth century.

Maddocks, Fiona. Hildegard von Bingen: The Woman of Her Age. New York: Doubleday, 2001. A careful and balanced biography of Hildegard. Maddocks is a music critic, well aware of arguments against Hildegard’s authorship of certain works, but her treatment of her subject allows for a full appreciation of the philosopher’s many talents. Draws on previously unavailable materials.

Newman, Barbara. Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. A comprehensive scholarly study that examines Hildegard’s contributions within the context of twelfth century thought and also as part of the sapiential tradition.

Newman, Barbara., ed. Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and Her World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Compiled in conjunction with the 900th anniversary of Hildegard’s birth, the nine essays in this book offer an intriguing look at the life and work of this remarkable woman. She was the first woman given permission by the pope to write theological books, and she also preached openly to both the clergy and the common people.

Pernoud, Regine. Hildegard of Bingen: Inspired Conscience of the Twelfth Century. Translated by Paul Duggan. New York: Marlowe, 1998. In addition to discussing the writings and visions of this influential twelfth century abbess, Pernoud provides information about Hildegard’s life. He offers insight into the turbulent political times she lived in and the effect she had on princes, the populace, and popes through her correspondence.

Schipperges, Heinrich. H. The World of Hildegard von Bingen: Her Life, Times, and Visions. Translated by John Cumming. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1998. A complete biography issued by a Christian publisher that has published several titles with Hildegard as the focus. Chapters address her early life, her musical, artistic, and medical works, and her philosophy of life. Bibliographical references, index.

Throop, Priscilla, trans. Hildegard von Bingen’s “Physica”: The Complete English Translation of Her Classic Work on Health and Healing. Rochester, Vt.: Healing Arts Press, 1998. The first complete translation of her natural healing system.