We not only learn from historic people, but we can also be encouraged by them.

This week some reflections about Hildegard of Bingen whose feast day was September 17^th. She was an amazingly prophetic woman who continues to motivate people and stimulate serious reflection. She was an abbess, an artist, an author, a composer, a mystic, a pharmacist, a poet, a preacher, and a theologian.

Hildegard, the youngest of ten children, was born in 1098 at Bermersheim near Mainz, Germany. Her parents were members of the nobility. When she was eight years old, her parents entrusted her to the care of a holy woman named Jutta. Then when she was fourteen years old, Hildegard, who was already having mystical experiences, entered the Frauenklause, a female hermitage associated with the Benedictine monastery at Disibodenberg, Germany. She was accompanied by Jutta who later became the superior of the small community of women. Hildegard remained under Jutta’s tutelage. When Jutta died in 1136, the members of the community elected Hildegard as their magistra (mother superior). Hildegard and her sisters soon afterwards left Disibodenberg because the nearby Benedictine monastery with strongly misogynist men made life difficult for them.

Hildegard then founded monasteries for women: Rupertsberg, near Bingen, in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. After her death on September 17, 1179, Hildegard was buried at the convent cemetery at Disibodenberg. In 1642, her remains were removed to the church of Eibingen. Pope Benedict XVI (1927 – 2022) canonized Hildegard on 10 May 2012, and on 7 October 2012 he proclaimed her a doctor of the church, one of only four women to have been so named. The others are Catherine of Siena (1347 – 1380), Teresa of Avila (1515 – 1582), and Therese of Lisieux (1873 – 1897).

Hildegard’s theology was intensely incarnational. She understood the material world as imbued with sacred significance and sacramental meaning. She considered the human body a microcosm of the cosmos, which Hildegard viewed as an ordered, harmonious whole. She emphatically affirmed that both women and men carry the image of God, which endows each sex with equal dignity before God and within humankind.

Philosophically, Hildegard stood far apart from her male predecessors in her ability to uphold the two principles of human difference and equal dignity. Plato had dissolved difference into masculine unity, while holding onto at least a basic equality. Aristotle had conceived of difference as hierarchical polarity. Hildegard’s complementarity, however, affirmed difference as a balanced, integrated harmony.

An esteemed advocate for scientific research, Hildegarde was one of the earliest promoters of the use of herbal medicine to treat ailments. She wrote many books but particularly two books related to healing. Physica was about how items in the physical world (plants, gemstones, fish, etc.) could be used in healing. Causes and Cures goes into personal health more directly, such as the importance of following a different diet in the winter than in the summer. During the Middle Ages, monasteries had their own infirmaries and were places that people might go to if they were ill. So, it was natural for Hildegard to have known about healing. She was really one of the first people to write in such detail about healing and health, and she was certainly the first woman to do so.

Hildegarde was also well-known as a composer. She combined all her music into a cycle called Symphonia Armonie Celestium Revelationum (“The Symphony of the Harmony of the Heavenly Revelations”), composed around 1152, which reflected her belief that music was the highest praise to God. Her works, including In Evangelium and O Viridissima Virga, are still released today, and her ethereal style continues to influence New Age music, defined more by the effect or feeling it produces rather than the instruments used in its creation. People studying the history of music before 1600 consider Hildegard the best-known example of a female composer during that period.

Hildegard refused to be defined by the patriarchal hierarchy of the church and pushed the established boundaries for women. She is perhaps best known for her spiritual concept of Viriditas – “greenness” – the cosmic life force infusing the natural world. For Hildegard, the Divine manifested itself and was apparent in nature. For her nature itself was not the Divine but the natural world gave proof of God and glorified God.

She is also known for her writings on the concept of Sapientia – Divine Wisdom – specifically immanent Divine Feminine DivWisdom which draws close to and nurtures the human soul. Scivias was Hildegard’s first major theological work and the only one of her writings that was both illuminated and copied by scribes from her monastery during her lifetime. Scivias was completed in 1151 or 1152 and described 26 religious visions she had experienced. It was the first of three works that she wrote describing her visions.

Hildegard corresponded with the great personalities of her time, including emperors, popes, and queens. Sometime between 1154 and 1171, she responded to a letter from Eleanor of Aquitaine (1124 – 1204), Queen of France from 1137 to 1152, asking for advice, with these words “Your mind is like a wall which is covered with clouds, and you look everywhere but have no rest. Flee this and attain stability with God and men, and God will help you in all your tribulations. May God give you blessing and help in all your works.”

Hildegarde of Bingen stands out as an extraordinary figure in women’s history. She was a courageous woman who found remarkable success by expressing her unique voice. She did not accept the traditional place for women in the world. She wrote her books, and, in a male-dominated church, she went on preaching tours at a time when women were not supposed to preach, especially in public. She refused to behave in “traditional” ways. She called for the recognition of the Divine Feminine to balance the traditional Sacred Masculine. She wrote at a time when, if the church authorities had not thought she was divinely inspired she could easily have been put to death as a heretic.

As a German Benedictine abbess, she was a no-nonsense person and certainly no stranger to controversy. She confronted Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1122 – 1190) for supporting at least three antipopes. Between 1152 and 1162, Hildegard often preached in the Rhineland. When she was 80 years old, her monastery in Bingen overlooking the river Rhine was placed under interdict because she had allowed the burial of a young man who had been excommunicated. She insisted that he had been reconciled with the church and had received its sacraments before dying. Nevertheless, the local diocesan canons authorized civil authorities to dig up the young man’s body. On the evening before the authorities arrived, Hildegard went to the grave, blessed it, and then, with the help of her nuns, removed all the cemetery markers and stones. She made certain the burial plot of the excommunicated man could not befound. The irate canons placed the abbey under interdict and forbade the celebration of or reception of the Eucharist at the Bingen monastery. This sanction was lifted only a few months before Hildegard’ death.

Hildegard of Bingen was truly an extraordinary woman and, I would say, the most fascinating and influential woman in medieval church history.

 

• Jack

 

Dr. John Alonzo Dick – Historical Theologian