Saint Hildegard (1098 – 1179) was a German abbess, visionary, mystic, and composer. In her work Hildegard of Bingen: The Women of Her Age, Fiona Maddocks writes that, “she was an extraordinarily gifted individual… this German abbess’s power and influence seeped into every crevice of twelfth-century life. That she also happened to be a woman who only found her voice in mid-life merely adds to the richness of her story. Today she is best known for her music. Yet her compositions form only a small part of her story.
“She was a polymath: a visionary, a theologian, a preacher; an early scientist and physician; a prodigious letter writer who numbered kings, emperors and popes among her correspondents. She was an artist not only in the musical and literary sense but in painting and, it would seem, architecture. She even invented her own coded language. Fortunately, since the twelfth century witnessed a flowering of scholarship, an extravagant amount of source material exists in the form of Hildegard’s own writings, her letters and contemporary biographical accounts.” Many today take a pilgrimage trail to learn more about her. Here are some of the historical sites that you can visit today that are associated with the life of Hildegard of Bingen:
She was born in 1098. Her father was a German knight attached to the castle. In 1106, at the age of 8, she was sent to the Abbey of St. Disibodenberg to live attached to an anchoress, Jutta von Sponheim. The abbey was founded by Disibod, an Irish monk who came to preach Christianity in the Frankish Empire during the 7th century. Hildegard would go on to write songs dedicated to Saint Disibod and to write his biography. Today, Disibodenberg is in ruins.
In 1112, at the age of 14, Hildegard took her vows and was “given the veil” by Otto of Bamberg. He is buried in the Michaelsberg Abbey, where you can see his tomb.
In 1136, when Hildegard was in her mid-30s, Jutta died and Hildegard was elected by her fellow nuns to become prioress at Disibodenberg. In 1141, Hildegard reports that God commanded her to begin sharing her religious visions. So, she began dictating the Scivias (“Know the Ways”) to Volmar and Richardis. Here is a copy of one of the manuscripts that has been fully digitized.
In 1146, she began exchanging letters with Bernard of Clairvaux, who founded the Clairvaux Abbey in France.
Around 1150, Hildegard left Disibodenberg and founded a monastery at Rupertsberg, named for Rupert of Bingen. Hildegard wrote a biography about Rupert’s mother, Bertha. Henry of Mainz consecrated the abbey in 1152. “It no longer exists today. The few remains of the monastery ruins were integrated into a new building.”
In 1152, Hildegard began writing Frederick Barbarossa and they became friends. In 1154, he invited her to Ingelheim. Today you can visit the ruins of the Ingelheim Imperial Palace.
Beginning in 1158, Hildegard went on preaching tours, as far north as Werden and as far east as Bamburg. The town of Bamburg is a UNESCO world heritage site, “a good example of a central European town with a basically early medieval plan and many surviving ecclesiastical and secular buildings of the medieval period.”
In 1165, Hildegard founded Eibingen Monastery. She visited it regularly but never lived there. The current structure dates to the early 20th century.
In addition to the Scivias, she also wrote Liber Vitae Meritorum (“Book of Life’s Merits”) and Liber Divinorum Operum (“Book of Divine Works”). Hildegard died in 1179 and was canonized in 2012. There is a church in Eibingen dedicated to her, built atop the ruins of the abbey she founded there in 1165. Her bones are held there.
In the 1180s, Gottfried of Disibodenberg and Theodoric of Echternach composed Vita sanctae Hildegardis (The Life of the Saintly Hildegard). Today you can visit the Abbey of Echternach in Luxembourg.
In 1666 the St. Rochus Chapel was built in Bingen, “the chapel was decorated in the 19th century with altars and pictures from the monastery church in Eibingen. The altar in the chapel still contains two Hildegard relics.”
“Bingen opened the Historisches Museum am Strom – Hildegard von Bingen as the climax of a year of celebrations commemorating “900 years of Hildegard”. The permanent exhibitions are devoted to St. Hildegard of Bingen, Bingen’s unique set of Roman surgical instruments as well as various aspects of Rhine Romanticism”
