Reading Saving Paradise: Hildegard

Hildegard records a vision

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was born just before the First Crusade.  By the time she was grown, crusading was draining Europe of its male leaders, giving rise to powerful, educated, and competent women. Some of these women were wives who ruled in place of their absent husbands; others, like Hildegard, were religious leaders. 

Hildegard was brilliant and multi-talented – she was a visionary, a mystic, a writer, composer and philosopher as well as a Benedictine abbess.  In addition to founding and leading two monasteries, she wrote theological, botanical and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, and poems, all the while supervising brilliant miniature illuminations – such as the illumination above.

Throughout her life, Hildegard was physically frail and frequently in pain. She came to believe that God had sent these illnesses to guide and teach her, and to inspire her creativity.  From the time she was a child, she also had mystical visions; she learned that recording her visions and reflections helped to ease her pain. 

Her visions told her that the whole creation would be transfigured, lit from within by the fire of divine love.  The golden city – her own image of the New Jerusalem – would only be completed at the end of time, but even now its celestial blessings streamed into the world.

In her writings, Hildegard often referred to herself as a member of the ‘weaker sex,’ and an ‘unlearned woman.’  It is quite probable that she didn’t think of herself as weak or uneducated, but when she said that her work and visions did not come from her own intellect or education, but from  the Holy Spirit, this gave her authority in a time when few women were permitted a voice.  

Hildegard frequently used her voice to condemn church practices she disagreed with, and she preached fiery sermons condemning sin. Her preaching was not limited to the monasteries; she conducted four preaching tours throughout Germany, speaking to both clergy and laity in chapter houses and in public, mainly denouncing clerical corruption and calling for reform.

Hildegard and Viriditas

Like the theologians of the early church, Hildegard celebrated Christ’s incarnation as the sign that God’s Spirit had penetrated all human flesh, sanctifying earthly life with incandescent beauty.   But unlike the earlier theologians, she believed divine beauty could only be found in the cloister, until the end times. She contrasted the corruption of her own time with her vision of Jesus a ‘the most beautiful of human beings, the very image and essence of beauty.’  But Christians, if they repented and turned away from sin, could be members of Christ’s beautiful body. 

Hildegard shared Bernard’s ecstatic mysticism and love for Jesus – but not of Jesus crucified.  Instead, she spoke of human love as participation in the divine viriditas (greening power).   In the mixture of beauty and tragedy that was the condition of life, God’s mercy was an omnipresent greening power. 

Like Bernard, Hildegard believed that history was moving toward the end times and the final judgment.  She also believed that if Christians remained faithful – through celibacy, piety, and pilgrimage (which included crusading) – they could help God bring a new age of beauty, justice and peace. 

Hildegard also shared Bernard’s enthusiasm for the Crusades.  When her brother led a crusade against the pacifist Cathars in southern France, she supported his efforts.  Hildegard did not write about events during the disastrous Second Crusade, but it can be assumed that the fight for the Holy Land confirmed her belief that Christendom was at the beginning of the ending times.

Hildegard lived out principles of incarnation in her work as a healer, exorcist, scientist, and musician.  Her work indicates that, even in the 12th century – and even among those who saw crusading in religious terms – whiffs of the fragrance of paradise remained in cloisters to those who were alert:

I, the fiery life of divine essence, 

flame out over the beauty of the fields, 

shine in the waters, 

and burn in the sun, moon, and starts.   

With every breath of air I awaken all things to life.