WHO IS HILDEGARD OF BINGEN?
Public Domain.
1098 was a year of happenings—so much so that some medieval historians believed a new spiritual age was about to dawn. The First Crusade was underway, with crusaders laying siege to the city of Antioch; the next year they would take Jerusalem. In France, a reform-minded group of monks set out to build an abbey in the wooded bogs of Burgundy where they could rededicate themselves to God through a life of austerity, prayer, and work. Their new religious order would come to be known as the Cistercians. In Italy, one of the most important theologians of the age, Anselm of Canterbury, was finishing one of his most important works, Why God Became Man (which is still required reading in many seminaries today). As emperors and popes clashed over who held the ultimate authority, a minor noble family in what is now Germany welcomed another child into the world, a little girl by the name of Hildegard. She would grow up to become the first woman in Christianity to leave behind a large body of theological writing.
Hildegard’s parents dedicated her as an oblate, an offering of gratitude to God. Oblates were typically given as children to monastic communities, where they received education and training until they were old enough to make their vows. Since Hildegard is traditionally held to have been the tenth child in her family, this would have made her a kind of “tithe” – a 10% offering – to the church. Rather than sending Hildegard to a convent, however, Hildegard’s parents entrusted her care and education to a holy noblewoman of the region, Jutta of Sponheim. From Jutta Hildegard received an education in reading and writing, including Latin. In 1112, Hildegard, Jutta, and another woman were enclosed as recluses at the monastery of Disibodenberg in order to further pursue lives of austerity, devotion, study, and prayer. More and more women joined Jutta and Hildegard, with noble families sending their daughters to receive spiritual training and education under Jutta’s direction. The community of women grew, and upon Jutta’s death, Hildegard, then age 38, was elected by the other women to be magistra, or leader, of the community.
It was after Hildegard was raised as magistra that she began the public ministry for which she is now known. It was not widely known before that point that Hildegard had been the recipient of divine visions since a very young age. One story tells of her having seen the light of divinity at the age of three, while another tells of a young Hildegard seeing a cow and declaring that a beautiful white calf with spots would born to it—and indeed the newborn calf looked just as Hildegard had prophesied. (1) As an adult, Hildegard continued to receive visions. In some she was given to know past or future events from the lives of particular individuals, while in others she was received revelations of a more doctrinal or theological nature, often with an eye toward reforming the church of her day. In a letter written toward the end of her life, Hildegard described these visions as a “reflection of the living Light” of divinity: “as the sun, the moon, and the stars appear in water,” she wrote, “so writing, sermons, virtues and certain human actions take form for me and gleam within it.” (2)
Five years after being raised as magistra, when she was 42, Hildegard received a prophetic and visionary call in the form of a fiery light that she described as permeating her whole being, giving her knowledge of all the books of Scripture. Part of this call included a command to make her visions public. Hildegard described herself as initially resisting this call, being driven to fulfill it only after God struck her with a severe illness that lingered until she obeyed. (3) Hildegard then began work on what would become her best-known work, the Scivias, a Latin title taken from the phrase “know the ways [sci vias] of the Lord.” The work, which would take her ten years to complete, recorded not only her visions, which were often highly pictorial and mysterious in nature, but her lengthy and authoritative interpretations of them.
Ever an intelligent and politic woman, Hildegard knew that claiming to be the recipient of divine visions was no guarantee of acceptance—as true in her day as in ours. She therefore perceptively sought counsel and supporters, claiming to be merely a wretched, uneducated woman who had been chosen as God’s humble instrument in order to better showcase divine might and wisdom. In an age when women’s spiritual authority and teaching were often regarded with suspicion, Hildegard proved to be especially adept at cultivating avenues for disseminating her message. In 1146, Hildegard wrote to Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the most famous monastic reformers of her day, securing his approval; not long after, she gained the acceptance of Pope Eugene III. In an 1148 letter to a Parisian theologian, Hildegard described herself as merely a feather borne up by the current of divine power. The message was clear: Hildegard did not speak out of her own authority, but God’s.
Hildegard’s visionary-theological writing, extraordinary as it is, was only a part of her long and ambitious career. Despite chronic and often severe illness, Hildegard was a tireless scholar, penning not only theological works but also works of natural science and medicine. Among these is an account of all the species of fish in the Rhine that remained the most thorough work on the topic until the 20th century. (4) Hildegard also wrote original music that moved beyond the traditional Gregorian chant of her day and a play to be performed in her convent, in which all of the parts were sung except for one—that of Satan. Furthermore, preceded by her reputation as a prophet, Hildegard became, as one scholar describes it, “a religious, moral, and political advisor to half of Europe.” (5) And, perhaps most remarkably, at age 60 she undertook four tours of preaching and lecturing in Germany, three by boat and one by land. She did this with the full approval of ecclesial leaders, despite that fact that the office of public teaching had been forbidden to women.
At one point, an early biography of Hildegard describes her as “not so much led as driven by the Holy Spirit.” (6) Perhaps little else could have sustained not only her ambitious career as writer, scholar, reformer, and magistra, but also her habit of standing firm in her convictions even when it meant publicly opposing prelates, abbots, and emperors. In Hildegard, a clarity and independence of vision were matched with the determination and skill to carry out these convictions.
Hildegard’s theological writings have proven no less compelling today than in her own day. The themes that resonate with modern readers are different from those that interested her 12th-century audiences, but they are no less rich. Of particular interest to modern readers is Hildegard’s relationship to creation. Hildegard is celebrated for her image of viriditas, or “greenness,” which is associated with life, moral goodness, and vigor—that is, with anything fruitful and thriving that the Holy Spirit brings into existence and sustains. The cosmos itself is alive with the electrifying power of God, who says to Hildegard in one of her visions:
“I am the supreme fire and energy. I have kindled all the sparks of the living … I am the fiery life of divine substance, I blaze above the beauty of the fields, I shine in the waters, I burn in sun, moon, and stars. And I awaken all to life with every wind of the air, as with invisible life that sustains everything. For the air lives in greenness and fecundity. The waters flow as though they are alive.” (7)
The incarnation of Christ, too, is described as being brought about by the Father’s “sweet power of green vigour.” (8) This theme in Hildegard’s writing has proven especially attractive to contemporary ecotheologians, as well as to nature lovers of all kinds.
Also of great interest to modern readers is Hildegard’s use of musical imagery to describe created reality. This imagery suggests that there is a divinely ordered harmonic or symphonic structure that runs through all of creation, from the individual human soul to the cosmos itself. Hildegard describes the revolutions of the heavens as producing “marvelous sounds,” a beautiful music that we cannot hear because we are too far removed from it. (9) Likewise, in the souls of holy and virtuous people, “the Holy Spirit sings in harmony.” (10) All of creation resounds with this “sacred sound.” (11)The happy confluence of this imagery with Hildegard’s own musical compositions has delighted modern audiences.
Despite her stature in her own day and her broad appeal to modern readers, Hildegard was not always as celebrated as she is today. It was not until the last quarter of the 20th century that Hildegard began to catch the attention of mainstream scholars, thanks in large part to the efforts of feminist historians and theologians. And it was only due to the tireless efforts of German nuns who labored on her behalf that Hildegard was canonized on May 10, 2012. Today, however, Hildegard is acclaimed as one of only four female doctors of the Roman Catholic church and she is admired by Christians and non-Christians alike for the strength of her personality, for her convictions in an age when female leadership was uncertain, and for her deep love of the richness of the natural world.
Anna Silvas, ed., Jutta and Hildegard: The Biographical Sources (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 199), 158, 267.
Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 7.
See the opening declaration of the Scivias for a description of this event.
Honey Meconi, Hildegard of Bingen (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018), 43.
Mark Atherton, trans., Hildegard of Bingen: Selected Writings (London: Penguin, 2001), x.
Michael Embach, “The Life of Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179),” trans. Florian Hild, in The Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Jennifer Bain (Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press, 2001), 28.
The Book of Divine Works 1.1, in Atherton, Hildegard of Bingen, 172.
“Hildegard to Bernard of Clairvaux, 1146 [Letter 1],” in Atherton, Hildegard of Bingen, 5.
Causes and Cures, in Atherton, Hildegard of Bingen, 105.
“O Jerusalem. Sequence for St Rupert,” in Atherton, Hildegard of Bingen, 49.
“Hildegard to Bernard of Clairvaux, 1146 [Letter 1],” in Atherton, Hildegard of Bingen, 5.
