St. Hildegard von Bingen

In 1106, an eight year old German girl entered a cloistered convent.  She died to the world and devoted her life to the service of God.  This usually would have been the last that anyone outside of the monastery heard or saw of this young girl.  However, this was St. Hildegard von Bingen, and God had other plans for her.  During her life, she corresponded with some of the most influential secular and religious leaders of her time, wrote several books, composed what is considered to be the first opera, wrote the first morality play, founded two convents, and went on four preaching journeys, any one of which achievements would have been remarkable for a woman living at her time.  She did everything for the service of God, and she was much more alive to the world than dead to it.

                St. Hildegard became the abbess of the community in 1136.  She was likely picked because of her noble birth, but also because of her obvious learning and holiness.  She had received visions from the time that she was a young girl, often in the form of a painfully bright light, which she called “the Living Light.”  She kept these visions to herself until 1141, when she received a vision instructing her to make her visions known, and shortly after she began recording her visions in her first book, Scivias.  Her records of her visions often begin with an “illumination,” or visual representation of her vision.  Then she describes the vision itself, what she saw and heard, and afterwards provides an interpretation and application of that vision, frequently using Sacred Scripture to explain.   She is also famous for her musical compositions, which were completely unique for her time, as she did not compose in one of the standard modes and she wrote in free verse, without rhyme or rhythm. 

                St. Hildegard’s life was full of conflict with her religious superiors or men who tried to discourage her from promulgating her visions or establishing “irregular practices” of her convent.  (On feast days, the sisters in her convent would sing the Divine Office with their hair down, decked out with crowns and rings.)  Her community of nuns was attached to a Benedictine monastery, which had total control over the convent’s finances and administration.  When St. Hildegard attempted to leave in order to found an independent convent due to the rapid growth of the community, the monks strongly resisted.  They were enjoying the popularity and financial benefits of having a visionary, even if some of them doubted the truth of those visions.  Many of the other nuns were opposed to the move as well, as they had vowed to live and die in that place.  However, she was finally successful in establishing and independent convent for her spiritual daughters.

                Beginning around the year 1160, St. Hildegard went on four preaching journeys throughout Germany.  She visited monasteries and her message consisted of a call to the monks and clergy to reform.  During her second trip, she also preached to the public, which few women were allowed to do. One of the abuses that she preached against was simony, or the selling of church offices.  She was also opposed to the general decadence of the Church, the immorality of temporal rulers, and lack of discipline among religious orders.  St. Hildegard strongly urged religious orders and the clergy to practice poverty instead of living like the wealthy nobles.

                St. Hildegard was never afraid of speaking the truth, although it sometimes came at great personal cost.  She had new and different ideas, and often entered a realm that would have been reserved for men at that time, and because of that, she is often praised by the feminists as being so ahead of her time and someone who challenged the establishment.  What they overlook is her love of and devotion to God and that all she did was simply to follow His Will as He revealed it to her.  She was His instrument.  She put her trust in Him and that gave her the fortitude to carry out His Will.

St. Hildegard, pray for us!

Bibliography

Baird, Joseph L. ed., The Personal Correspondence of Hildegard of Bingen. Translated

by Joseph L. Baird and Tadd K. Ehrman. New York: Oxford University Press,

2006.

Fox, Matthew. Illuminations. Vermont: Bear & Company, 2002.

The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen. Vol 1, Translated by Joseph L. Baird and Radd K.

Ehrman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

McInerney, Maud Burnett, ed. Garland Medieval Casebook. Vol. 20, Hildegard of

Bingen: A Book of Essays. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998.

Neuman, Barbara. Vision: The Life and Music of Hildegard von Bingen. Edited by Jane

Bobko. New York, Penguin, 1995.

Schipperges, Heinrich. The World of Hildegard of Bingen: Her Life, Times, and Visions.

Translated by John Cumming. Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 1998.