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“I am the fiery life of divine substance, I blaze above the beauty of the fields, I shine in the waters, I burn in sun, moon and stars.”

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Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century Benedictine nun canonized in 2010, was an abbess, a leading scholar, theologian, philosopher, visionary, musician, linguist, artist, mystic, and scientist. The tenth child of a noble German family, she was sent from around the age of eight to live with and be educated by Jutta of Sponheim, an anchorite in a Benedictine cloister at the monastery of Disibodenberg. At fifteen, she began wearing the Benedictine habit and pursuing a religious life. When Jutta died, Hildegard was elected as the new abbess by her fellow nuns. Hildegard lived to eighty-one - the equivalent of two average lifetimes in the twelfth century. Hildegard was a polymath. During the course of her life, Hildegard wrote three major theological works, the first recorded morality play, two scientific treatises, over three hundred letters, composed a large body of music, invented her own language and founded two monasteries.

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From a young age, Hildegard experienced visions which she called the umbra viventis lucis, the reflection of the living light. She returned to her visions again and again in all her works. Alongside extensive descriptions of her visions, she provided explanations, commentaries and sometimes visual representations. A letter which she wrote at the age of seventy-seven describes her experience of this light:

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“From my early childhood, before my bones, nerves, and veins were fully strengthened, I have always seen this vision in my soul, even to the present time when I am more than seventy years old. In this vision my soul, as God would have it, rises up high into the vault of heaven and into the changing sky and spreads itself out among different peoples, although they are far away from me in distant lands and places. And because I see them this way in my soul, I observe them in accord with the shifting of clouds and other created things. I do not hear them with my outward ears, nor do I perceive them by the thoughts of my own heart or by any combination of my five senses, but in my soul alone, while my outward eyes are open. So I have never fallen prey to ecstasy in the visions, but I see them wide awake, day and night. And I am constantly fettered by sickness, and often in the grip of pain so intense that it threatens to kill me, but God has sustained me until now. The light which I see thus is not spatial, but it is far, far brighter than a cloud which carries the sun. I can measure neither height, nor length, nor breadth in it; and I call it "the reflection of the living Light." And as the sun, the moon, and the stars appear in water, so writings, sermons, virtues, and certain human actions take form for me and gleam.”

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Throughout her life, Hildegard sought ways to explore the deeper truths of the universe, which she felt had been revealed to her through her visions. She wrote that she was ‘compelled by a great pressure of pains to make known what I had seen and heard. ..But then my veins and marrow became filled with powers I had lacked in my childhood and youth’. A voice told her to ‘cry outtherefore and writ!’ It was at this point that with the assistance of Volmar, a monk, her visions began to be recorded.

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These visions were subsequently confirmed as authentic by a committee of theologians when she was in her forties. A monk was appointed to help her record the visions in writing. The finished work, Scivias, written between 1141 and 1152, consisted of twenty-six visions which were “prophetic and apocalyptic” and dealt with topics such as the church, the relationship between God and humanity and redemption.

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Hildegard’s writing is testimony to her view of divinity and love flowing through the natural world. She described the natural world as held in harmony through the female figures of Divine Love and Wisdom, hence her frequent reference to ‘greenness and fecundity’ in Scivias.

“I am the fiery life of divine substance, I blaze above the beauty of the fields, I shine in the waters, I burn in sun, moon and stars. And I awaken to life with every wind of the air, as with invisible life that sustains everything. For the air lives in greenness and fecundity. The waters flow as though they are alive. The sun also lives in its own light, and when the moon has waned it is rekindled by the light of the sun and thus lives again; and the stars shine out in their own light as though they are alive.”

“The soul is a breath of living spirit, / that with excellent sensitivity, / permeates the entire body to give it life. / Just so, the breath of the air / makes the earth fruitful. / Thus the air is the soul of the earth, moistening it, greening it.”

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In her scientific work Hildegard drew attention to the differences between male and female bodies to stress that they were unique, rather than one being inferior to the other. In her theology she put great emphasis on the importance of the female figures of Ecclesia, Synagoga, Love, Wisdom, Eve and the Virgin Mary as the foundations of both the spiritual and universal. She argued that all aspects of the church, and even Christ himself, only exist through the female. When describing her visions in her later theological works, she often switched between male and female pronouns as a way of showing that Divine Love flows through everything regardless of sex.

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Hildegard is the best known example of a female composer of early music. She emphasised that she learned how to create music “without any human instruction, although I had never learnt notation or singing”. “There is the Music of Heaven in all things and we have forgotten how to hear it until we sing.”

“Music stirs our hearts and engages our souls in ways we can’t describe. When this happens, we are taken beyond our earthly banishment back to the divine melody Adam knew when he sang with the angels, and when he was whole in God, before his exile.”

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Hildegard is considered by some scholars to be “the founder of natural sciences in Germany” and her remedies are said to be well known among herbalists and practitioners of alternative medicine. She was fascinated by medicine and the human body. She repeatedly wrote about the importance of looking after the human body ‘since it took care of the soul’. She is believed to have been the first nun and one of the first people to have written in detail about healing and health in general. She practised and advocated moderation and balance. Her book Causae et Curae promoted the importance of following a different type of diet to suit particular seasons. Her book Physica explored how items in the physical world, such as plants and water, could be used in healing.

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Hildegarde’s creativity extended to an experiment with language and to the creation of a new alphabet. The Lingua Ignota survives as a glossary of around 1,000 words.

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