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Easter Morning Open Thread: Hildegard of Bingen [1]

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Date: 2023-04-09  

Happy Easter morning, Crew. Today’s diary is a (very) brief bio of Hildegard of Bingen.

Morning Open Thread is a daily, copyrighted post from a host of editors and guest writers. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum. Please join us.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098?-1179) was a nun, theologian, mystic, composer, herbalist, practitioner, feminist icon, and all around polymath. She was born to a family of lower nobility where she claimed to have begun seeing visions from a very young age. Likely because of these visions her rather worldly parents sent her at age eight to live in a Benedictine monastery in Disibodenberg. There she quickly learned to read and write as well as play the psaltery. She was elected Mother Superior at age 38 by her fellow nuns.

At about this time, Hildegard was asked by the local Abbot Volmar to be his prioress. Hildegard, however, had other plans. They certainly didn’t include serving under an abbot. She and some of her nuns dreamed of striking out on their own to nearby Rupertsberg. When Volmar said no to her plan, Hildegard went over his head. She asked for and received the approval of Archbishop Henry I of Mainz. But Volmar did not relent. All of a sudden, Hildegard was stricken with a mysterious paralyzing illness. She insisted this was due to God’s displeasure that she was not being allowed to set up her mission. When Volmar himself couldn’t budge her out of her bed he finally relented. In 1165, Hildegard and her nuns also opened a second monastery in Eibengen.

Through all this, Hildegard continued to receive her visions. The noted neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks speculated in his work The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat these visions were due to painful migraines. Hildegard did write of her lifelong pains.

Hildegard’s writings on her visions on theology eventually caught the attention of Pope Eugenius. The Pope granted her express permission to continue writing and speaking to the public. In those days, this was quite a big deal for a woman. They normally wouldn’t have counted for much more than their husband’s property. Note—Hildegard wrote in Latin, not in her native German. Whether or not her writings were polished up by a scribe is unknown. Throughout them she continually states that she was merely an uneducated woman. In either case, it was a good ploy to gain acceptance in a male dominated world.

While at Rupertsberg, Hildegard and her nuns ran a hospital and studied herbal remedies. Like many of her contemporary women, Hildegard was convinced this was a better method for healing illnesses than the bloodletting that was all too typical of male physicians. She and her nuns recorded much of their knowledge in their own language and alphabet. Some of her remedies are still used today by herbalists. Hildegard was the first German woman physician as well as the mother of German botany.

Hildegard’s patients also likely received little homilies along with their medical treatments. From her writings we know she was a firm believer that each of us, no matter what our station in life, should live up to our full potential. Normally back then such ambitions were reserved for noblemen.

Now for Hildegard’s musical compositions: most of them were surely played within her monastery strictly by and for her nuns and the nearby noblewomen. Her best known work, Ordo Virtutum (Play of the Virtues) was a musical drama written in plainchant. Notably, in this play it is the Virtues that return the fallen to the faithful community, not the male prophets. Only recently was interest in her music revived.

Hildegard von Bingen, as she came to be called, was finally canonized in 2012.

This is, as always, an open thread.

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