Hildegard of Bingen

1098–1179, GERMAN

A mystic, composer, scholar, theologian, preacher, and scientist, Hildegard was an astonishingly gifted woman, whose musical works are hailed as among the most accomplished of the Middle Ages.

HILDEGARD OF BINGEN
Hildegard challenged patriarchy via the Church, her music, and her books on topics from theology and the natural world to medicine and sexuality.

IN CONTEXT

Challenging elite monasticism

Monasteries were hugely influential institutions in Europe at the time of Hildegard’s birth and had exerted their impact on economic, political, and spiritual life. Monks and nuns were often from privileged families and wielded tremendous power in the region, which led to corruption and excessive wealth. Challenges to this system emerged in the 12th century by, for example, the Cistercians—a religious order that advocated manual labor for monks and nuns—and by the religious leader Peter Waldo, who renounced his wealth, calling for voluntary poverty.

CISTERCIAN MONKS AND NUNS LABORING IN THE FIELDS

Hildegard of Bingen—also known as St. Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine—was born in 1098 in a small village in the Rhineland (now Western Germany), possibly Bermersheim, to a noble, although not hugely wealthy, landowning family. She is thought to have been the last of 10 children.

Even as a child, Hildegard was exceptional. From the age of five she began to have visions that, many years later, came to assume great spiritual significance in her life, and that she eventually documented via her own striking illustrations, music, and a series of accomplished theological works.

A life of devotion

In 1106, at the age of eight, Hildegard was placed under the guidance of Jutta of Spanheim (1092–1136), a hugely devout young noblewoman, who taught her Latin and the Psalms. The decision to place Hildegard in Jutta’s care was doubtless as much a financial as an educational or religious decision on the part of her parents, who did not have great capital—unlike the Spanheims, who were an extremely wealthy, influential family in the region. The placement helped to secure their daughter’s future stability.

In 1112, after living together for six years, the two young women began a highly reclusive, intensely religious life at the (male) Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg at Odernheim (see box), which soon after extended to include a small nunnery, or convent, where Jutta became abbess. The nuns lived in small stone cells, isolated from the monks. By 1115, Hildegard had taken her vows and, on Jutta’s death in 1136, succeeded Jutta as abbess. Hildegard spent almost half her life at Disibodenberg.

Her assistant there was the learned Volmar, a monk and scribe who, in accordance with standard monastic practice, became her secretary and helped to document her visions. He was also her spiritual guide, confessor, and companion. His death in 1173, six years before her own, would have been a great personal and professional loss for her.

In 1141 Hildegard recorded a vision of a “… mass of fiery light of the greatest brightness pouring down from the heavens. It enveloped my brain and my heart was kindled with a flame that … warmed me as the sun warms the earth.” This powerful experience, which she claimed to be divine intervention, prompted her to make public her visions—in part, via her theological texts. The most acclaimed of these are: Scivias (Know the Way, 1141–1151), thought to have been illustrated by Hildegard herself, which discusses creation, redemption, and salvation; the Book of Life’s Merits (1158–1163), an exchange between virtue and vice; and her last great visionary text, Book of Divine Works (1163–1174), which outlines the author’s theories on cosmology.

MONASTERY OF DISIBODENBERG
Hildegard began her life of religious devotion at the Disibodenberg monastery in the Rhineland when she was just 14 years old. She stayed there for 40 years.

THE UNIVERSE AND COSMIC MAN
This 13th-century illustration of a human astride the spheres that form the universe is from Hildegard’s Book of Divine Works (1163–1174). In this text, she set out, among other things, her theories of man and the cosmos—all of which spring from the basic (early Greek) premise that humans are composed of the same elements that form the world: earth, water, air, and fire.

New directions

The revelations about her visions brought Hildegard considerable fame and numerous converts, inspiring her to found her own convent at Rupertsberg near Bingen (from where her name is derived) around 1148. She also later founded a second monastery, at Eibingen, on the hillside above Rüdesheim on the east bank of the Rhine, but never lived there. At the age of 60, Hildegard began a series of preaching tours in Germany that focused on her visions and spiritual insights—a bold and courageous decision for a woman of that period in a ferociously patriarchal world. Among Hildegard’s passions and numerous talents was music: paradise, for her, was to be filled with it. She maintained that her compositions “completed” her visions. Her pieces always combine music and words—she perceived the two to be inextricably connected: “The words symbolize the body, and the … music indicates the spirit.”

Music was fundamental to life in the cloisters and Hildegard would have been familiar with chant genres, including Gregorian chant (the plainsong or liturgical chant of medieval church music), and may have been exposed to some secular music (see box, opposite). She would also probably have been aware of the work of the 11th-century German composers and theorists Hermanus Contractus and Berno of Reichenau.

However, as Hildegard indicates in her writings, she was largely uneducated and had never studied music, form, or composition. Her work, by all accounts, was propelled by her visionary experiences. The literary scholar and linguist Mark Atherton has suggested that Hildegard’s technique departs substantially from the accepted conventions of Gregorian plainsong: “Her melody often ranges over two octaves, frequently leaping suddenly from a low note to a high, varying its short phrases and motifs, and lingering on one syllable as it ascends and descends.”

Hildegard’s compositions extend from flamboyant early works and sensual pieces to the more restrained chants of later years. Rooted in liturgical practice and dated between c. 1140 and c. 1160, they include devotional songs, antiphons, elaborate responsories, hymns, and sequences for the Mass. Her most famous compositions are her version of opera, Ordo virtutum (Order of the Virtues, c. 1150)—a morality play set to music, with 82 melodies—and her 77 liturgical chants, Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum (Symphony of the Harmony of Heavenly Revelations, c. 1158).

According to Christopher Page, a scholar of medieval music, “We don’t know if Hildegard is sitting and humming the songs, or if she’s perhaps humming and writing them down on a white tablet, with a final version then being written by someone else on slate or parchment … We don’t know if the words come first, or if the words and the music grow together in an organic development.”

HILDEGARD RECEIVING A VISION
In this medieval illustration, Hildegard of Bingen is depicted (left), during one of her visionary experiences, receiving divine inspiration. She is accompanied by her assistant, the scribe and prior Volmar. A shaft of bright light from Heaven is shown descending on her head as she documents the extraordinary experience on a tablet.

A pioneering woman

Hildegard of Bingen died in 1179 at her monastery in Rupertsberg. She was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. During her lifetime, she was revered as a visionary prophet, but her extreme seclusion and the fact that she was a woman meant that her music received little attention—it is only since the 1980s that Hildegard’s pioneering achievements in this field have been recognized. Her legacy also extends to an impressive body of writing on medicine, science, cosmology, and the natural world. She has acquired almost iconic status in some circles, particularly within feminism, and is the subject of great popular and scholarly interest.

RUPERTSBERG MONASTERY
The monastery at Rupertsberg in Bingen, on the junction of the Rhine and Nahe rivers, was founded by Hildegard in c. 1148. It was destroyed in 1632 by the Swedish army in the Thirty Years’ War.

IN CONTEXT

Poet-musicians of the 12th century

As well as her undoubted knowledge of Gregorian chant and the religious music of the day, Hildegard may have been familiar with the trouvères, aristocratic poet-composers, who were active in southern Europe in the 12th century, and whose lyrics were sung, often by the poets themselves, sometimes with an instrumental accompaniment. Hildegard would also certainly have heard of the minnesänger, or minnesingers, traveling singers of northern Europe, and of their famous composer-performer Walther von der Vogelweide (c. 1170–c. 1230), who wrote poems on politics and love, and whose delightful and best-known work, “Under the Linden Tree,” resembles the song of a nightingale.

MINSTRELS, FROM THE CODEX OF THE CANTIGAS DE SANTA MARIA, c. 1280