Hildegard of Bingen, a medieval diviner and nun whose music made it onto CDs

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

A woman in the era of the Middle Ages was doomed to seclusion within the walls of a house or monastery, and the fair sex did not even dream of realizing her talents and capabilities in several areas of activity at once. The biography of Hildegard of Bingen, whose name has been preserved in the history of world culture for almost a thousand years, seems all the more striking and outstanding now.

Childhood and the path of a nun

Hildegard was the tenth child in a noble family, her father Hildebert was a vassal of Count von Sponheim. According to biographers, the girl was notable for sickness and poor health, which led to her constant desire to develop spiritually, to learn. She had a great interest in medicinal plants and medicines made from them. When Hildegard was eight, the count's sister, the nun Jutta, began to take care of her. Not much older than her pupils, Jutta devoted her life to teaching noble girls, choosing for herself this path of serving God. All her life she wore a hair shirt and chains, led an extremely ascetic lifestyle.

The whole subsequent life of Hildegard was under the influence of the young nun. At the age of 14, both of them moved to the Disibodenberg skete near Bingen, founded by monks of the Benedictine order. Despite the hermit life, Hildegard managed to study a lot, study grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, harmony. Jutta lived for only 44 years, and after her death, the skete and its community began to rule Hildegard.

At the age of about fifty, Hildegard began building the Rupertsberg convent, and later her courtyard in Eibingham.

Visions and Notes of Hildegard

According to the revelations of Hildegard, from childhood, she was visited by visions, and later she was ordered from above to write down these visions. So the nun began her work Scivias, which she led for about ten years and in which 26 visions were included.

Pope Eugene III got acquainted with the notes of the abbess of the nunnery, who handed over the works to a special commission, and the commission confirmed their prophetic nature. Hildegard wrote down the events that were to happen in the future, revealed knowledge that was not available to man, considering her mission to recognize the divine plan, to encourage believers to respect God and humility during prayers.

Hildegard has devoted many years to healing and describing healing through prayers, healthy lifestyles and healing plants. She penned a work called "A book about the inner essence of various natural creatures." The nun's approach to treatment was very progressive for her time. In particular, she insisted on the perception and healing of the general condition of a person, including his bodily and spiritual characteristics. The book also described in detail the healing properties of various plants, stones, animals, based on the observations of Hildegard herself, the works of her predecessors, and all the same revelations that, according to the abbess, guided her in writing her works.

The admiration for the abbess was so great that, according to the life stories of Hildegard, the patient began to feel healing already at the very appeal to her.

Musical compositions by Hildegard

The abbess became famous not only as a soothsayer and healer, but also as the author of musical works that have come down, no matter how difficult it is to imagine, to this day. Not being trained in musical notation or chanting, she composed music designed to glorify God on earth, perceived her work as a composer as a kind of service, as a sacrament.

Hildegard considered music to be a manifestation of divine harmony, revealing the essence of the human soul. Musical works were created for the monastery and performed during liturgies and holidays in the church calendar. Hildegard herself compiled a collection of her works entitled "Harmonic Symphony of Celestial Revelations", consisting of seven dozen chants. Among the musical works of the abbess was also the only opera dedicated to the struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.

In her musical compositions, Hildegard paid special attention to the Virgin Mary and St. Ursula, several songs were written specifically for the opening of the Cologne cemetery, where the relics of this saint were located.

At present, the music of Hildegard Bingen is performed by early music ensembles, the most famous of which is the group "Sequentia" by Benjamin Bagby and Barbara Thornton (after her death, the solo parts were performed by Katarina Livlyanich). The complete collection of the nun's works is a collection of 8 CDs.

Among other achievements of Hildegard, it should be noted that she created a linguistic phenomenon called "the unknown language" (Lingua ignota) - hundreds of new words and changed ways of writing Latin letters - many years before the first experiments with the creation of artificial languages!

The personality of Hildegard Bingen is of interest in our days - not only because she was centuries ahead of her time and in the era of medieval perception of the world introduced new, valuable knowledge into the culture of that era, enriched science and art. Her amazing fate is also unique because Hildegard was recognized by her contemporaries, revered by them, was in correspondence with the leaders of states and the Catholic Church - this was at a time of persecution of dissent and the extremely low status of women in society. A whimsical interweaving of religious revelations, scientific research and works of musical art has shaped the image of this woman, respected for thousands of years.

Hildegard was canonized in 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI and was given the title of Teacher of the Church. The name of Saint Hildegard is borne by the church in Aybingham, on the territory of the monastery she founded.

There are so few great women in Medieval Europe that legends have been formed around their names for a long time. One such person was a woman who occupied the papal throne for several years, however, the veracity of this fact continues to be disputed.