Hildgard of Bingen


Hildegard was born in Rheinhesse in 1098 to aristocratic parents. In keeping with the custom of the times, they decided to devote the life of their 10th child, Hildegard, to religion. Consequently, they sent her as a young child to live with Jutta, the anchoress at the nearby Benedictine monastery. The pair – the only women at the monastery – attracted renown for their holiness, and other girls were sent to join them. By the time Hildegard took the veil at age 15, the community of women had formed a small convent. At Jutta’s death, Hildegard became abbess.
At this period, Hildegard, who had experienced visions from childhood, received a vision that clarified for her the meaning of major Biblical and religious texts. She was, moreover, instructed to preserve her new understanding in writing. This behest yielded the Scivias, a work that received the approval of the Pope and thus consolidated Hildegard’s authority.
While writing the Scivias, Hildegard moved her community to Bingen to form an autonomous establishment. She met with resistance from the Benedictine monks to whom her order had been attached and from her own nuns, but she eventually prevailed, despite the new location’s relative poverty and inadequate housing for the nuns. During this time, Hildegard turned her attention to practical concerns, writing sacred music for her nuns and local community and generating scientific and medical works on the uses of plants and minerals. She also wrote an early morality play. Thus the self-taught abbess was adept in a number of fields, from music (for which she is most famous today) to medicine to theology. Her output was remarkable both for its quantity and its quality.