Hildegard of Bingen: Visionary Abbess, Composer and Scholar

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) was a German abbess, visionary writer, composer and scholar, and one of the most remarkable figures of the 12th century. In 1141, at the age of 42, she began writing Scivias, a book describing visions she believed came from God. Over the next four decades she produced theology, music, a sung drama, works on medicine and nature, and hundreds of letters to the most powerful people in Europe.

Early life at Disibodenberg

Hildegard was born in 1098, probably at Bermersheim near Alzey in the Rhineland, the youngest of ten children of a noble family. She later wrote that she had seen visions of light since early childhood but kept them largely to herself.

Her parents dedicated her to the religious life. She was placed in the care of Jutta of Sponheim, a young noblewoman who lived as an anchoress, enclosed in a cell attached to the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg. The traditional date for the enclosure is 1 November 1112, when Hildegard was about fourteen. A small community of women grew up around Jutta, and Hildegard took vows there.

Hildegard’s education was limited by the standards of the cathedral schools. She learned to read the Latin psalms and the liturgy, and she later described herself as an unlearned woman. Her Latin was serviceable rather than polished, and her secretaries corrected her grammar, but she insisted that the content of her visions should not be changed.

When Jutta died in 1136, the nuns elected Hildegard as their magistra, or leader. The women’s community remained under the authority of the abbot of the male monastery.

The call to write: Scivias

In 1141 Hildegard experienced a vision which, she wrote, commanded her to record what she saw and heard. She was helped by Volmar, a monk of Disibodenberg who acted as her secretary for some thirty years, and by a nun, Richardis of Stade.

The resulting book, Scivias, took about ten years to complete. It is divided into three parts and describes 26 visions, each followed by an explanation of its meaning: the creation and fall, redemption through Christ and the Church, and the history of salvation to the end of time. A richly illuminated copy was made at Rupertsberg in Hildegard’s lifetime, probably under her direction. Its striking images, including the universe pictured as a great egg-shaped form surrounded by fire and the opening picture of Hildegard receiving her vision as tongues of flame descend on her head, are among the most original in medieval art.

Hildegard described her visions in an unusual way. She said that she saw them while fully awake, with her eyes open, and not in dreams or trances. She called the source of her visions the shadow of the living light, a phrase that has become closely linked with her name.

A turning point came in 1147–1148, when Pope Eugenius III held a synod at Trier. Encouraged by Archbishop Henry of Mainz, he read part of her unfinished work and sent his approval. Hildegard had also written to Bernard of Clairvaux, the leading churchman of the age and preacher of the Second Crusade, seeking his reassurance. Papal recognition gave her writings authority and made her famous.

Founding Rupertsberg

Around 1150, against the wishes of the monks of Disibodenberg, Hildegard moved her nuns to a new convent at Rupertsberg on the Rhine near Bingen. The move gave the women greater independence, and Hildegard later secured the convent’s lands and its own right to manage its affairs. In 1165 she founded a second house across the river at Eibingen.

She ruled her community with confidence, and sometimes controversy. She was criticised by another abbess, Tenxwind of Andernach, for allowing her nuns to wear crowns and flowing veils on feast days and for admitting only women of noble birth.

Visionary writings, science and music

Hildegard wrote two further visionary books: the Liber vitae meritorum (Book of Life’s Merits), written about 1158–1163, and the Liber divinorum operum (Book of Divine Works), begun in 1163 and finished around 1174. The latter presents a vast picture of the cosmos, with humanity at its centre.

She also wrote practical works about the natural world, later known as Physica and Causae et curae. They describe plants, animals, stones and the causes and treatment of illness, drawing on monastic medicine and folk knowledge. Physica includes one of the earliest written references to the use of hops in beer, though she did not invent the practice.

Her music is perhaps her best-known legacy today. Around 70 to 80 chants survive, written for the liturgy of her convent, with soaring melodies that range widely across the voice. Her Ordo Virtutum (Play of the Virtues) is a sung morality drama, among the earliest of its kind. She even devised an invented language, the Lingua ignota, with its own alphabet.

Letters, preaching and politics

About 300 to 400 letters survive from Hildegard’s correspondence, exchanged with popes, the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, bishops, abbots, nobles and ordinary believers who sought her advice. She did not hesitate to rebuke the powerful, including Barbarossa when he supported antipopes.

Unusually for a woman of her time, she undertook several preaching tours between about 1158 and 1170, speaking to clergy and lay people in cities such as Cologne, Trier and Mainz. She denounced corruption in the Church and warned against the Cathar heresy.

In 1178, at almost eighty, she allowed an excommunicated nobleman to be buried in her convent’s cemetery, insisting that he had been reconciled before death. The church authorities in Mainz placed Rupertsberg under an interdict, banning the singing of the liturgy, until it was lifted in March 1179. She died on 17 September 1179.

Legacy and modern revival

Hildegard was venerated after her death, and attempts at formal canonisation began in the 13th century but were never completed. Her relics are kept at Eibingen, where a Benedictine abbey bearing her name was rebuilt in the early 20th century. The famous illuminated Rupertsberg manuscript of Scivias disappeared in 1945, after being sent to Dresden for safekeeping; it survives through a hand-painted facsimile made by the nuns of Eibingen in the 1920s and 1930s.

Since the late 20th century Hildegard has enjoyed a striking revival, through recordings of her music, studies of her medicine and interest in her as a learned woman in a male-dominated church. Some modern health products use her name, often with little connection to her writings. In 2012 Pope Benedict XVI extended her cult to the universal Church and named her a Doctor of the Church.

Timeline

• 1098: Hildegard is born in the Rhineland, probably at Bermersheim.
• 1 November 1112: She is enclosed with Jutta of Sponheim at Disibodenberg (traditional date).
• 1136: Jutta dies and Hildegard becomes magistra of the community.
• 1141: She begins writing Scivias after a vision.
• 1147–1148: Pope Eugenius III approves her writings at the Synod of Trier.
• c. 1150: She moves her nuns to Rupertsberg near Bingen.
• 1163: She begins the Liber divinorum operum.
• 1165: She founds a second convent at Eibingen.
• 17 September 1179: Hildegard dies at Rupertsberg.
• 7 October 2012: Benedict XVI declares her a Doctor of the Church.

Why it matters

Hildegard shows how much a medieval woman could achieve within the structures of monastic life. Her visions, music and writings on nature give a rare, many-sided view of 12th-century thought. Like her contemporaries Abelard and Heloise, she belongs to the intellectual flowering sometimes called the twelfth-century renaissance.