Biographical+Background+of+Hildegard


 * Back to Home Page --->**

Hildegard of Bingen was born on the 16th September 1098 in Bermershein (what we now know as Germany). She was born the tenth child of a well-to-do family and was always a sickly child. When she was aged 3, Hildegard had her first vision which she described later in life as when "[I] //saw such a great brilliance that my soul trembled."//

At the age of 8, her parents tithed her by following the custom of giving their tenth child over to the church. her new home was a Benedictine monastery at Disibodenburg and thee, Hildegard was nurtured and educated by a woman named Jutta con Spanheim; an abbess at the monastery. Jutta became a major influence in Hildegard's life as she instilled in her a love for music, the Latin psalms and the Holy Scripture.

All throughout this time, Hildegard experienced periodic visions of the //"living light"//. She claimed that she would have these visions after she had experienced illness and that after she had the vision, she would feel an extraordinary sense of well being, insight and power. By the time she was 15, Hildegard took her vows and became a Benedictine nun.

When she was 38 years old, Jutta passed away and Hildegard was elected as the new abbess by the rest of the nuns. By now, she did not want to make known her encounters with //"the light"// as it was unseemly for a woman in the Middle Ages to claim that she was a vessel for God's divine revelations. By speaking out, she could be denounced as a heretic and persecuted by the Church. This all changed, however, when at age 42, an image appeared before her and the voice of God commanded her to write down her visions. She described it as being //"Forced by a great pressure of pains to reveal what I had seen and heard."//

She then confided what she had experienced with a monk named Volmar who encouraged her to write down her visions. Volmar later became her long- serving secretary.


 * Career, Occupation and Achievements[[image:all_beings_celebrate.jpg width="382" height="456" align="right" caption=""All Beings Celebrate Creation" An illustration found in the Scivias"]]**

Hildegard then went on to do great things both within her monastery as well as in the rest of society.

Back at home, her role as abbess meant that she would discipline and advise her nuns, manage the staff, oversee the distribution of food and clothing supplies, attend to legal affairs and supervise the work on the convent land. it was also within her monastery that she completed many written works, among them one of her greatest work- //Scivias (Know the Ways of the Lord)-// in 1141. She said: //"What I write is what I see and hear in the vision. i compose no other words than those I hear, and I set them forth in unpolished Latin just as I hear in the vision, for i am not taught in this vision to write as philosophers do. And the words of the vision are not like the words uttered by the mouth of many but like shimmering flame or a cloud floating in a clear sky."//

In 1147 or 1148, Pope Eugenius lll read Hildegard's work and was very impressed. he then sent a letter to her with his blessings, his stamp of approval and his endorsement of her prophetic role. With this letter she became the first woman to receive permission from the Pope to write on theological issues. From then on she became a voice of conscience for the influential people of her day including popes, bishops, scholars and even the Holy Roman Emperor. She also embarked on a preaching tour which was not only unprecedented for a woman but also forbidden by canon law and by 1150, she had a nunnery built at Rupertsberg near bingen.

Some of her other famous actions include: - Denounce the mighty Archbishop of Cologne as a predatory hawk. - Send a warning letter to Barbarossa telling him to stop acting "childish" by appointing anti- popes otherwise he might be struck down by God.

However, Hildegard also continued to pursue her other interests and talents such as medicine and music. One of the main ways that she expressed her interest in medicine was through her extensive writing on the topic of human sexuality. In one of her works, she says,

//"A man's love... Is a blazing heat, like a fire on a blazing mountain, which can hardly be quenched, while hers is more like a wood- fire that is easy to quench: but a woman's love, in comparison with a man's, is like a sweet warmth coming from the sun, which brings forth fruit."//

She also believed that the disposition of the children that came from a man and woman would be determined by the amount of love and passion that was involved in their sexual relations. The worst case of this happening, according to Hildegard, was when there was no love in the relationship and the seed of the man was weak; which would result in the birth of a bitter daughter.

Hildegard also highly valued music, describing it as the means of recapturing the original joy and beauty of paradise (heaven). This passion for music lead her to compose 77 songs in between her other commitments and she described her own music as "//a symphony of harmony of heavenly revelations".// Hildegard's compositions were also quite set apart and unique as they were uncharacteristically joyful compared to most of the songs composed during the Middle Ages.


 * Death of Hildegard**

Hildegard's life came to an end on September 17th, 1179. Yet, before she died, she managed to achieve something quite significant. When the Archbishop fo mainz ordered her to dig up the body of a local (which he perceived as having died as an excommunicate) she refused because she was concinved that the man had repented before his death. He then told her that if she did not do what he asked, they would impose on her the most serious punishment possible from the church; to not be allowed to celebrate mass, receive the sacraments or sing the divine office. But still, Hildegard refused and as a result, she and the other nuns then had to suffer the consequences of the decision. However, Hildegard then wrote to the church, in one of her most famous letters, protesting against their deprivation of the sung office which was central to their spiritual lives. The excommunication was then lifted shortly before her death as a result of her hard work.

**Back to Home Page --->**