Hildegard von Bingen (Part Seven)

Text and illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia,
unless otherwise stated.

His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, extended the liturgical cult of Saint Hildegard to the universal Church in 2012.

Hildegard's name was, nonetheless, taken up in the Roman Martyrology at the end of the 16th-Century. Her Feast Day is 17 September. Numerous Popes have referred to Hildegard as a Saint, including Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

On 10 May 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the liturgical cult of St. Hildegard to the universal Church in a process known as "equivalent canonisation". Hildegard’s parish and pilgrimage Church in Eibingen, near Rüdesheim, houses her relics.

Hildegard of Bingen also appears in the calendar of saints of various Anglican churches, such as that of the Church of England, in which she is commemorated on 17 September.

Hildegard has also become a figure of reverence within the contemporary New Age movement, mostly due to her holistic and natural view of healing, as well as her status as a mystic. She was the inspiration for Dr. Gottfried Hertzka's "Hildegard-Medicine", and is the namesake for June Boyce-Tillman's Hildegard Network, a healing centre that focuses on a holistic approach to wellness and brings together people interested in exploring the links between spirituality, the arts, and healing.

German Emperor, Friedrich Barbarossa, mit seinen Söhnen König Heinrich und Herzog Friedrich. Miniatur aus der Welfenchronik (Kloster Weingarten, 1179-1191). Heute Landesbibliothek Fulda.

Frederic I Barbarossa and his sons King Henry VI and Duke Frederick VI. Medieval illustration from the Chronicle of the Guelphs (Weingarten Abbey, 1179-1191).

In recent years, Hildegard has become of particular interest to feminist scholars. Her reference to herself as a member of the "weaker sex" and her rather constant belittling of women, though at first seemingly problematic, must be considered within the context of the patriarchal Church hierarchy. Hildegard frequently referred to herself as an unlearned woman, completely incapable of Biblical exegesis. 

Such a statement on her part, however, worked to her advantage, because it made her statements that all of her writings and music came from visions of the Divine more believable, therefore giving Hildegard the authority to speak in a time and place where few women were permitted a voice. Hildegard used her voice to condemn Church practices she disagreed with, in particular simony.

In space, she is commemorated by the asteroid 898 Hildegard.

THIS CONCLUDES THE ARTICLE ON HILDEGARD VON BINGEN.

Hildegard von Bingen (Part Six)

Text and illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia,
unless otherwise stated.

Hildegardis-Codex, sogenannter Scivias-Codex, Szene:
Der mystische Leib
(The Mystical Body).
circa 1165 A.D.
From: Wikimedia Commons.

Due to Church limitation on public, discursive rhetoric, the mediaeval rhetorical arts included: preaching, letter writing, poetry, and the encyclopedic tradition. Hildegard’s participation in these arts speaks to her significance as a female rhetorician, transcending bans on women’s social participation and interpretation of Scripture.

The acceptance of public preaching by a woman, even a well-connected Abbess and acknowledged Prophet. does not fit the usual stereotype of this time. Her preaching was not limited to the Monasteries; she even preached publicly in 1160 in Germany. She conducted four preaching tours throughout Germany, speaking to both clergy and laity in Chapter Houses and in public, mainly denouncing clerical corruption and calling for reform.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who advanced the work of Hildegard von Bingen at the Synod of Trier in 1147 and 1148.

Bernard of Clairvaux, O.Cist (1090 – August 20, 1153) was a French Abbot and the primary builder of the reforming Cistercian order.

After the death of his mother, Bernard sought admission into the Cistercian order. Three years later, he was sent to found a new Abbey at an isolated clearing in a glen known as the Val d'Absinthe, about 15 km southeast of Bar-sur-Aube. 

According to tradition, Bernard founded the Monastery on 25 June 1115, naming it Claire Vallée, which evolved into Clairvaux. There, Bernard would preach an immediate faith, in which the intercessor was the Virgin Mary.

 In the year 1128, Bernard assisted at the Council of Troyes, at which he traced the outlines of the Rule of the Knights Templar, who soon became the ideal of Christian nobility.

Many Abbots and Abbesses asked Hildegard for prayers and opinions on various matters. She travelled widely during her four preaching tours. She had several rather fanatic followers, including Guibert of Gembloux, who wrote frequently to her and eventually became her secretary, after Volmar died in 1173. In addition, Hildegard influenced several monastic women of her time and the centuries that followed; in particular, she engaged in correspondence with another nearby visionary, Elisabeth of Schönau.

Hildegard von Bingen corresponded with another visionary, 

Elisabeth of Schönau. This photo is of the Altar of St. Elizabeth of Schönau (with the reliquary in which Elizabeth's skull is kept) in the Monastery Church of St. Florin, Kloster Schönau-im-Taunus.

Hildegard communicated with Popes, such as Eugene III and Anastasius IV, statesmen, such as Abbot Suger, German Emperors, such as Frederick I Barbarossa, and other notable figures, such as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who advanced her work, at the behest of her Abbot, Kuno, at the Synod of Trier in 1147 and 1148.

Hildegard of Bingen’s correspondence with many people is an important element of her literary work because this is where we can see her speaking most directly to us.


Beatification and Canonisation

Hildegard was one of the first persons for whom the Roman canonisation process was officially applied, but the process took so long that four attempts at canonisation were not completed, and she remained at the level of her beatification.

PART SEVEN FOLLOWS

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.

Web-Site: http://www.abtei-st-hildegard.de

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

Hildegard von Bingen (Part Three)

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

"Universal Man" illumination 

from Hildegard's Liber Divinorum Operum, 1165

Hildegard's Vita was begun by Godfrey of Disibodenberg, under Hildegard's supervision. It was between November 1147 and February 1148, at the Synod in Trier, that Pope Eugenus heard about Hildegard’s writings. It was from this that she received Papal approval to document her visions as revelations from the Holy Spirit, giving her instant credibility.

Before Hildegard’s death, a problem arose with the clergy of Mainz. A man buried in Rupertsburg had died after excommunication from the Church. Therefore, the clergy wanted to remove his body from the sacred ground. Hildegard did not accept this idea, replying that it was a sin and that the man had been reconciled to the Church at the time of his death.

On 17 September 1179, when Hildegard died, her Sisters claimed they saw two streams of light appear in the skies and cross over the room where she was dying.

Hildegard's musical, literary, and scientific writings are housed primarily in two manuscripts: the Dendermonde manuscript and the Riesencodex. The Dendermonde manuscript was copied under Hildegard's supervision at Rupertsberg, while the Riesencodex was copied in the century after Hildegard's death.

A Facsimile of the"Riesencodex"

(Hs.2 of the Hessische Landesbibliothek, Wiesbaden, fol. 466-481v)

(see http://www.omifacsimiles.com/brochures/hild_w.html)

Attention in recent decades to women of the Mediaeval Church has led to a great deal of popular interest in Hildegard, particularly her music. In addition to the Ordo Virtutum, sixty-nine musical compositions, each with its own original poetic text, survive, and at least four other texts are known, though their musical notation has been lost.

This is one of the largest repertoires among Mediaeval composers. Hildegard also wrote nearly 400 letters to correspondents ranging from Popes to Emperors to abbots and abbesses; two volumes of material on natural medicine and cures; an invented language called the Lingua ignota; various minor works, including a Gospel commentary and two works of hagiography; and three great volumes of visionary theology: Scivias, Liber vitae meritorum ("Book of Life's Merits" or "Book of the Rewards of Life"), and Liber divinorum operum ("Book of Divine Works").

One of her better known works, Ordo Virtutum (Play of the Virtues), is a morality play. It is unsure when some of Hildegard’s compositions were composed, though the Ordo Virtutum is thought to have been composed as early as 1151. 

The morality play consists of monophonic melodies for the Anima (human Soul) and 16 Virtues. There is also one speaking part for the Devil. Scholars assert that the role of the Devil would have been played by Volmar, while Hildegard's nuns would have played the parts of Anima and the Virtues.

PART FOUR FOLLOWS

Hildegard von Bingen (Part Two)

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

Mutterschaft aus dem Geiste und dem Wasser

(Motherhood from the Spirit and the Water), 1165

In any case, Hildegard and Jutta were enclosed at Disibodenberg in the Palatinate Forest in what is now Germany. Jutta was also a visionary and thus attracted many followers who came to visit her at the enclosure. Hildegard also tells us that Jutta taught her to read and write, but that she was unlearned and therefore incapable of teaching Hildegard Biblical interpretation.

Hildegard and Jutta most likely prayed, meditated, read scriptures, such as the psalter, and did some sort of handiwork during the hours of the Divine Office. This also might have been a time when Hildegard learned how to play the ten-stringed psaltery. Volmar, a frequent visitor, may have taught Hildegard simple psalm notation. The time she studied music could also have been the beginning of the compositions she would later create.

Upon Jutta's death in 1136, Hildegard was unanimously elected as "magistra" of the community by her fellow nuns. Abbot Kuno of Disibodenberg also asked Hildegard to be Prioress, which would be under his authority. Hildegard, however, wanted more independence for herself and her nuns and asked Abbot Kuno to allow them to move to Rupertsberg. This was to be a move towards poverty, from a stone complex that was well established to a temporary dwelling place. 

When the abbot declined Hildegard's proposition, Hildegard went over his head and received the approval of Archbishop Henry I of Mainz. Abbot Kuno did not relent, however, until Hildegard was stricken by an illness that kept her paralyzed and unable to move from her bed, an event that she attributed to God's unhappiness at her not following his orders to move her nuns to Rupertsberg. 

Hildegard von Bingen's alphabet "Litterae ignotae"

It was only when the Abbot himself could not move Hildegard that he decided to grant the nuns their own monastery. Hildegard and about twenty nuns moved to the Saint Rupertsberg monastery in 1150, where Volmar served as provost, as well as Hildegard's confessor and scribe. In 1165, Hildegard founded a second monastery for her nuns at Eibingen.

Visions

Hildegard says that she first saw "The Shade of the Living Light" at the age of three, and by the age of five she began to understand that she was experiencing visions. She used the term 'visio' to this feature of her experience, and recognized that it was a gift that she could not explain to others. Hildegard explained that she saw all things in the light of God through the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.

She was hesitant to share her visions, confiding only to Jutta, who, in turn, told Volmar, Hildegard's tutor and, later, secretary. Throughout her life, she continued to have many visions, and in 1141, at the age of 42, Hildegard received a vision she believed to be an instruction from God, to "write down that which you see and hear." Still hesitant to record her visions, Hildegard became physically ill. The illustrations recorded in the book of Scivias were visions that Hildegard experienced, causing her great suffering and tribulations. In her first theological text, Scivias ("Know the Ways"), Hildegard describes her struggle within:

But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses, and by the witness of a certain noble maiden of good conduct [the nun Richardis von Stade] and of that man whom I had secretly sought and found, as mentioned above, I set my hand to the writing.

While I was doing it, I sensed, as I mentioned before, the deep profundity of scriptural exposition; and, raising myself from illness by the strength I received, I brought this work to a close – though just barely – in ten years. [...] And I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, 'Cry out therefore, and write thus!'

PART THREE FOLLOWS

Hildegard von Bingen (Part One)

Text and Illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia,

unless otherwise accredited.

Illumination from the Liber Scivias showing Hildegard receiving a vision

and dictating to her scribe and secretary

Saint Hildegard of Bingen, O.S.B. (German: Hildegard von Bingen; Latin: Hildegardis Bingensis) (1098 A.D. – 17 September 1179 A.D.), also known as Saint Hildegard, and Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath. Elected a magistra by her fellow nuns in 1136, she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. One of her works as a composer, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play.

She wrote theological, botanical and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, and poems, while supervising brilliant miniature Illuminations.

On 10 May 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the liturgical cult of Saint Hildegard to the universal Church, in a process known as "equivalent canonization". On 27 May 2012, the Pope announced that, on 7 October 2012, he will declare Saint Hildegard to be the 35th Doctor of the Church.

Eibingen Abbey was founded by Hildegard von Bingen in 1165.

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.

In 1988, the sisters founded Marienrode Priory at Hildesheim, which became independent of Eibingen 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 "Bach Trompeten Gala" with Edgar Krapp, organ.



Hildegard's date of birth is uncertain. It has been concluded that she may have been born in the year 1098. Hildegard was raised in a family of free nobles. She was her parents' tenth child, sickly from birth. In her Vita, Hildegard explains that from a very young age she had experienced visions.

Monastic life

Perhaps due to Hildegard's visions, or as a method of political positioning, Hildegard's parents, Hildebert and Mechthilde, offered her as an oblate to the Church. The date of Hildegard's "Enclosure in the Church" is contentious. Her Vita tells us she was enclosed with an older nun, Jutta, at the age of eight. However, Jutta's enclosure date is known to be in 1112, at which time Hildegard would have been fourteen. Some scholars speculate that Hildegard was placed in the care of Jutta, the daughter of Count Stephan II of Sponheim, at the age of eight, before the two women were enclosed together six years later. There is no written record of the twenty-four years of Hildegard's life that she was in the convent together with Jutta. It is possible that Hildegard could have been a chantress and a worker in the herbarium and infirmarium.

PART TWO FOLLOWS