HILDEGARD VON BINGEN
Sophia!
You of the whirling wings,
Hildegard of Bingen
HILDEGARD VON BINGEN
Hildegard von Bingen was extremely gifted in many areas. She was a herbologist, healer, mystic, visionary, prophet and writer with her very own signature. She has left us many extraordinary creative works that are still deeply touching our hearts and minds, and full of relevance to our times. In the poetry and melody of her songs, she reveals the full authority, intelligence and striking originality of her genius. She wrote profusely as no woman before her. Her training came with her lifelong beautiful Benedictine rule of chanting eight times a day that inspired her to write 77 chants and the first musical drama in history which she entitled "The Ritual of the Virtues." She writes in her autobiographical passages: "I composed and chanted plainsong in praise of God and the saints even though I had never studied either musical notation or singing." Unlike the more lulling mainstream music of her day, her lyrical speech breaks into deepest heartfelt emotion; her fiery and exhilarating melodies soar up to two and one half octaves, dancing into flourishing swirls, which were certainly a challenge to most contemporary singers. All her work is rooted in her faith and poetical vision.
Hildegard's music is interwoven with her holistic spiritual work that is growing from the beauty and depth of her theology, philosophy, mysticism and medicine. Her music is reflecting all of the Divine Light and essence as in a precious sparkling jewel. For Hildegard as for the medieval, music was an all-embracing concept. It was the symphony of angels praising God, the balanced proportions of the revolving celestial spheres, the exquisite weaving of body and soul, the hidden design of nature's creations. It was the manifest process of life moving, expanding, growing towards the joy of its own deepest realizations and a profound unity of voices singing the praises of God here on earth. It was beauty, sound, fragrance and the flower of human artistry. Over 300 times in her writings, Hildegard uses music to illuminate spiritual truths.
Hildegard von Bingen was born in Bermersheim 16 September 1098 as the tenth child to noble parents. With eight years she is being entrusted to the Church in the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg, and being cared for by Countess Jutta von Sponheim, herself only aged fifteen. Jutta becomes her friend and spiritual mentor. It is only to Jutta and a monk called Volmar, who was to become her lifelong secretary that Hildegard confided in her many visions.
In 1141, five years after her election as Mother Superior, Hildegard had a vision that changed her life completely and that rose her beyond her quiet withdrawn life in the monastery. She had a vision giving her instant understanding of the meaning of religious texts, and commanding her to write down everything she would observe in her visions: ‘And it came to pass...when I was 42 years and 7 months old, that the heavens were opened and a blinding light of exceptional brilliance flowed through my entire brain. And so it kindled my whole heart and breast like a flame, not burning but warming...and suddenly I understood of the meaning of expositions of the books...’ But her confidence was still very low, and therefore, she hesitated to act on her visions. She had been told to ‘write what you see’. For a while she remained hesitant: ‘But although I heard and saw these things, because of doubt and low opinion of myself and because of diverse sayings of men, I refused for a long time a call to write, not out of stubbornness but out of humility, until weighed down by a scourge of God, I fell onto a bed of sickness.’
Only after she had fallen ill from this martyring inner conflict she finally listened to members of her order, and started to write. Although she never doubted the Divine origin of her visions she wanted to avoid to be regarded as one of those new schismatics that were so fashionable in her days, and who attracted large followings. She always remained critical of them and was keen to be approved by the Catholic Church. She sought the blessing of the Pope by writing to St Bernard of Clairvaux. He brought her visions to the attention of Pope Eugenius III, and a commission to determine, whether Hildegard’s visions were divinely inspired was established which came to visit Hildegard. The commission declared her to be a genuine mystic.
Through her many letters she became a powerful woman in medieval times. She communicated with Popes, statesmen, heads of monasteries and German emperors. Frederick I Barbarossa, granted her and her convent protection after she had given him advice for important matters and had prayed for him many times with a successful outcome.
In 1150 Hildegard finally moved her growing convent from Disibodenber, the monastery they had shared with the Benedictine monks, to Bingen, on the banks of the Rhine. From this time her life and work were extremely prolific. The poet and composer Hildegard wrote poetry and music, which were mostly liturgical plainchants in a single vocal melodic line about saints and the Virgin Mary. Every poem and song is a memory of divine harmony. Her 77 chants are a very powerful physical and spiritual healing tool, helping the singer to reconnect to the divine realm and manifesting holiness in daily life.
As a healer and therapist Hildegard is ddeply connected to the universe and Mother Earth. She writes several profound treatises like LIBER SIMPLICIS MEDICINAE (Book of Simple Medicines), LIBER COMPOSITAE MEDICINAE (Book of the Composition of Medicine) , and PHYSICA, where she names 513 plants, animals, elements, stones and metals. She describes 293 plants and their effects, including vegetables, grains, herbs and roots. CAUSAE ET CURAE (1150) is reflecting her deep conviction that all is one, and that the process of healing is at the same time the way of becoming whole again. The latter two books became also known as LIBER SUBTILATUM.
Her knowledge was based on the ancient cosmology of the four elements - fire, water, air and earth - with their correspondences of heat, moisture, dryness and cold and the humours in the body - yellow bile, blood, phlegm, and melancholy (black bile). If one or two of these humours were out of balance, then one had to consume the equivalent plant or animal that had the quality of what the body was lacking.
Her main literary works are the triology of SCIVIAS (Know the Way), 1151, LIBER VITAE MERITORUM (Book of Life’s Merits), 1150-63, and LIBER DIVINORUM OPERUM (Book of Divine Works), 1150-79. In these books she describes all her visions and interprets them. They are also beautifully decorated, probably by the nuns of her convent under her instruction and partly transcribed by the monk Volmar. The interpretations of her visions are drawing on Catholic spirituality.
The trilogy was very well-known throughout the Middle Ages, and much later it was even printed for the first time in Paris in 1513.
Hildegard was extremely powerful with a natural grace and deep humility, not only by the standards of the Middle Ages. Although she often had to battle illness she still traveled and bravely held numerous public sermons and speeches.
Many nobles, abbots and abbesses as well as local people asked for her prayers, healing and her opinion on a variety of subjects. This is even unusual for a woman of our time.
She died in her monastery on the Rupertsberg at Bingen on the Rhine on 17 September 1179. September 17th is also her memorial or feast day.
Although Hildegard was one of the first saints for which the canonization process of the Catholic Church was initiated, it took so long that all four attempts remained unresolved (the last was under Pope Innocent IV in 1244). However, people had been devoted to her and called her a saint already long before the canonization procedure even began. The ever-increasing devotion to her resulted in her name being listed as a saint in the Roman martyrology at the end of the 16th century without ever finalising the canonization process.
There is a shrine with Hildegard’s relics in her second monastery that she had founded in Eibingen near Ruedesheim on the Rhine in 1165.
©Sigrid (Ziggy) Agocsi, London, 2006
I AM
I am the one whose praise echoes on high. I adorn all the earth. I am the breeze that nurtures all things green. I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits. I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams. I am the rain coming from the dew that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life. I am the yearning for good.
Hildegard von Bingen
HOLY SPIRIT
Holy Spirit giving life to all life, moving all creatures, root of all things, washing them clean, wiping out their mistakes, healing their wounds, you are our true life, luminous, wonderful, awakening the heart from its ancient sleep.
Hildegard von Bingen
Prayer
O God, by whose grace thy servant Hildegard of Bingen, enkindled with the fire of thy love, became a burning and shining light in thy Church: Grant that we may be aflame with the spirit of love and discipline, and may ever walk before thee as children of light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, liveth and reigneth, one God, now and for ever.
Sophia!
You of the whirling wings,
circling, encompassing energy of God:
you quicken the world in your clasp.
One wing soars in heaven,
one wing sweeps the earth,
and the third flies all around us.
Praise to Sophia!
Let all the earth praise her!
Hildegard of Bingen
HILDEGARD VON BINGEN
Hildegard von Bingen was extremely gifted in many areas. She was a herbologist, healer, mystic, visionary, prophet and writer with her very own signature. She has left us many extraordinary creative works that are still deeply touching our hearts and minds, and full of relevance to our times. In the poetry and melody of her songs, she reveals the full authority, intelligence and striking originality of her genius. She wrote profusely as no woman before her. Her training came with her lifelong beautiful Benedictine rule of chanting eight times a day that inspired her to write 77 chants and the first musical drama in history which she entitled "The Ritual of the Virtues." She writes in her autobiographical passages: "I composed and chanted plainsong in praise of God and the saints even though I had never studied either musical notation or singing." Unlike the more lulling mainstream music of her day, her lyrical speech breaks into deepest heartfelt emotion; her fiery and exhilarating melodies soar up to two and one half octaves, dancing into flourishing swirls, which were certainly a challenge to most contemporary singers. All her work is rooted in her faith and poetical vision.
Hildegard's music is interwoven with her holistic spiritual work that is growing from the beauty and depth of her theology, philosophy, mysticism and medicine. Her music is reflecting all of the Divine Light and essence as in a precious sparkling jewel. For Hildegard as for the medieval, music was an all-embracing concept. It was the symphony of angels praising God, the balanced proportions of the revolving celestial spheres, the exquisite weaving of body and soul, the hidden design of nature's creations. It was the manifest process of life moving, expanding, growing towards the joy of its own deepest realizations and a profound unity of voices singing the praises of God here on earth. It was beauty, sound, fragrance and the flower of human artistry. Over 300 times in her writings, Hildegard uses music to illuminate spiritual truths.
Hildegard von Bingen was born in Bermersheim 16 September 1098 as the tenth child to noble parents. With eight years she is being entrusted to the Church in the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg, and being cared for by Countess Jutta von Sponheim, herself only aged fifteen. Jutta becomes her friend and spiritual mentor. It is only to Jutta and a monk called Volmar, who was to become her lifelong secretary that Hildegard confided in her many visions.
In 1141, five years after her election as Mother Superior, Hildegard had a vision that changed her life completely and that rose her beyond her quiet withdrawn life in the monastery. She had a vision giving her instant understanding of the meaning of religious texts, and commanding her to write down everything she would observe in her visions: ‘And it came to pass...when I was 42 years and 7 months old, that the heavens were opened and a blinding light of exceptional brilliance flowed through my entire brain. And so it kindled my whole heart and breast like a flame, not burning but warming...and suddenly I understood of the meaning of expositions of the books...’ But her confidence was still very low, and therefore, she hesitated to act on her visions. She had been told to ‘write what you see’. For a while she remained hesitant: ‘But although I heard and saw these things, because of doubt and low opinion of myself and because of diverse sayings of men, I refused for a long time a call to write, not out of stubbornness but out of humility, until weighed down by a scourge of God, I fell onto a bed of sickness.’
Only after she had fallen ill from this martyring inner conflict she finally listened to members of her order, and started to write. Although she never doubted the Divine origin of her visions she wanted to avoid to be regarded as one of those new schismatics that were so fashionable in her days, and who attracted large followings. She always remained critical of them and was keen to be approved by the Catholic Church. She sought the blessing of the Pope by writing to St Bernard of Clairvaux. He brought her visions to the attention of Pope Eugenius III, and a commission to determine, whether Hildegard’s visions were divinely inspired was established which came to visit Hildegard. The commission declared her to be a genuine mystic.
Through her many letters she became a powerful woman in medieval times. She communicated with Popes, statesmen, heads of monasteries and German emperors. Frederick I Barbarossa, granted her and her convent protection after she had given him advice for important matters and had prayed for him many times with a successful outcome.
In 1150 Hildegard finally moved her growing convent from Disibodenber, the monastery they had shared with the Benedictine monks, to Bingen, on the banks of the Rhine. From this time her life and work were extremely prolific. The poet and composer Hildegard wrote poetry and music, which were mostly liturgical plainchants in a single vocal melodic line about saints and the Virgin Mary. Every poem and song is a memory of divine harmony. Her 77 chants are a very powerful physical and spiritual healing tool, helping the singer to reconnect to the divine realm and manifesting holiness in daily life.
As a healer and therapist Hildegard is ddeply connected to the universe and Mother Earth. She writes several profound treatises like LIBER SIMPLICIS MEDICINAE (Book of Simple Medicines), LIBER COMPOSITAE MEDICINAE (Book of the Composition of Medicine) , and PHYSICA, where she names 513 plants, animals, elements, stones and metals. She describes 293 plants and their effects, including vegetables, grains, herbs and roots. CAUSAE ET CURAE (1150) is reflecting her deep conviction that all is one, and that the process of healing is at the same time the way of becoming whole again. The latter two books became also known as LIBER SUBTILATUM.
Her knowledge was based on the ancient cosmology of the four elements - fire, water, air and earth - with their correspondences of heat, moisture, dryness and cold and the humours in the body - yellow bile, blood, phlegm, and melancholy (black bile). If one or two of these humours were out of balance, then one had to consume the equivalent plant or animal that had the quality of what the body was lacking.
Her main literary works are the triology of SCIVIAS (Know the Way), 1151, LIBER VITAE MERITORUM (Book of Life’s Merits), 1150-63, and LIBER DIVINORUM OPERUM (Book of Divine Works), 1150-79. In these books she describes all her visions and interprets them. They are also beautifully decorated, probably by the nuns of her convent under her instruction and partly transcribed by the monk Volmar. The interpretations of her visions are drawing on Catholic spirituality.
The trilogy was very well-known throughout the Middle Ages, and much later it was even printed for the first time in Paris in 1513.
Hildegard was extremely powerful with a natural grace and deep humility, not only by the standards of the Middle Ages. Although she often had to battle illness she still traveled and bravely held numerous public sermons and speeches.
Many nobles, abbots and abbesses as well as local people asked for her prayers, healing and her opinion on a variety of subjects. This is even unusual for a woman of our time.
She died in her monastery on the Rupertsberg at Bingen on the Rhine on 17 September 1179. September 17th is also her memorial or feast day.
Although Hildegard was one of the first saints for which the canonization process of the Catholic Church was initiated, it took so long that all four attempts remained unresolved (the last was under Pope Innocent IV in 1244). However, people had been devoted to her and called her a saint already long before the canonization procedure even began. The ever-increasing devotion to her resulted in her name being listed as a saint in the Roman martyrology at the end of the 16th century without ever finalising the canonization process.
There is a shrine with Hildegard’s relics in her second monastery that she had founded in Eibingen near Ruedesheim on the Rhine in 1165.
©Sigrid (Ziggy) Agocsi, London, 2006
I AMI am the one whose praise echoes on high. I adorn all the earth. I am the breeze that nurtures all things green. I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits. I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams. I am the rain coming from the dew that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life. I am the yearning for good.
Hildegard von Bingen
HOLY SPIRIT
Holy Spirit giving life to all life, moving all creatures, root of all things, washing them clean, wiping out their mistakes, healing their wounds, you are our true life, luminous, wonderful, awakening the heart from its ancient sleep.
Hildegard von Bingen
SPIRITUAL WISDOM
Oh Greening Branch you stand in all your nobility like the rising dawn. Rejoice now and exult and deign to free the fools we are from our long slavery to evil, and hold out your hand to raise us up...
Hildegard Von Bingen
MOTHER EARTH
The earth is at the same time mother, she is mother of all that is natural, mother of all that is human. She is the mother of all, for contained in her are the seeds of all. The earth of humankind contains all moistness, all verdancy, all germinating power. It is in so many ways fruitful. All creation comes from it. Yet it forms not only the basic raw material for humankind, but also the substance of the incarnation of God's son.
Hildegard von Bingen
MAY THE INFINITE LIGHT OF OUR LORD BLESS YOU AND KEEP YOU ALWAYS!
Oh Greening Branch you stand in all your nobility like the rising dawn. Rejoice now and exult and deign to free the fools we are from our long slavery to evil, and hold out your hand to raise us up...
Hildegard Von Bingen
MOTHER EARTH
The earth is at the same time mother, she is mother of all that is natural, mother of all that is human. She is the mother of all, for contained in her are the seeds of all. The earth of humankind contains all moistness, all verdancy, all germinating power. It is in so many ways fruitful. All creation comes from it. Yet it forms not only the basic raw material for humankind, but also the substance of the incarnation of God's son.
Hildegard von Bingen
MAY THE INFINITE LIGHT OF OUR LORD BLESS YOU AND KEEP YOU ALWAYS!
