Notre Dame de Rouen. The façade of the Gothic Church in France. Photographer: Hippo1947. Licence: SHUTTERSTOCK.

Tuesday, 31 July 2012

Hildegard von Bingen (Part Five)


Text and Illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia,
unless otherwise accredited.




Benediktinerinnenkloster Eibingen
(Eibingen Abbey)
Author: Moguntiner
Photo: October 2006.


Eibingen Abbey (in German, Abtei St. Hildegard, full name, Benedictine Abbey of St. Hildegard) is a community of Benedictine nuns in Eibingen, near Rüdesheim, in Hesse, Germany.

The original community was founded in 1165 by Hildegard von Bingen. It was dissolved at the beginning of the 19th-Century during the secularisation of this part of Germany.

The present community was established by Charles, 6th Prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg in 1904 and re-settled from St. Gabriel's Abbey, Bertholdstein. The nunnery belongs to the Beuronese Congregation within the Benedictine Confederation.

In 1941, the nuns were expelled by the Nazis; they were not able to return until 1945.



Abtei St. Hildegard in Eibingen,
Ortsteil von Rüdesheim am Rhein.
Innenansicht der Abteikirche.
Interior of the Abbey Church of Eibingen.
Author: Haffitt.
Photo: May 2012.
From: Wikimedia Commons.


In 1988, the sisters founded Marienrode Priory at Hildesheim, which became independent of Eibingen Abbey in 1998.

The nuns work in the vineyard and in the craft workshops, besides undertaking the traditional duties of hospitality. They can be heard (but not seen) singing their regular services.

The abbey is a Rhine Gorge World Heritage Site. The church has been used for concerts of the Rheingau Musik Festival, such as a "BachTrompetenGala" with Edgar Krapp, organ.



Eibingen Abbey: A Benedictine Abbey, full of the contemplative life.


It is claimed by some that it is likely Hildegard learned simple Latin, and the tenets of the Christian faith, but was not instructed in the Seven Liberal Arts, which formed the basis of all education for the learned classes in the Middle Ages: the Trivium of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric, plus the Quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.

The correspondence she kept with the outside world, both spiritual and social, transgressed the Cloister as a space of female confinement, and served to document Hildegard’s grand style and strict formatting of mediaeval letter writing.

Contributing to Christian European rhetorical traditions, Hildegard “authorised herself as a theologian” through alternative rhetorical arts. Hildegard was creative in her interpretation of theology. She believed that her monastery should not allow novices who were from a different class than nobility because it put them in an inferior position. She also stated that ‘woman may be made from man, but no man can be made without a woman.'


PART SIX FOLLOWS


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