Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen (c. 1098–1179), known as the 'Sibyl of the Rhine,' was a German Benedictine abbess whose extraordinary range of accomplishments — as visionary, theologian, composer, naturalist, pharmacologist, and counselor to popes and emperors — makes her one of the most remarkable figures of the medieval world, and arguably the most accomplished woman of the entire Middle Ages. Hildegard was born into a noble family in the Rhineland and, as the tenth child, was offered as a tithe to the Church at age eight, placed in the care of the anchoress Jutta of Sponheim at the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg. After Jutta's death in 1136, Hildegard was elected magistra (mother superior) of the small community of nuns. She later founded two independent monasteries: Rupertsberg near Bingen (1150) and Eibingen across the Rhine (1165). Hildegard had experienced mystical visions since early childhood but kept them private until 1141, when, at around age forty-three, she received what she described as a divine command to 'write what you see and hear.' With the encouragement of her secretary Volmar and the formal approval of Pope Eugene III (obtained through the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux at the Synod of Trier in 1147), she began producing theological works of startling originality. Her three major visionary works — 'Scivias' (Know the Ways), 'Liber Vitae Meritorum' (Book of Life's Merits), and 'Liber Divinorum Operum' (Book of Divine Works) — present a comprehensive cosmology integrating theology, ethics, and the natural world. As a composer, Hildegard produced the largest body of liturgical music by any medieval composer — over seventy liturgical songs and the morality play 'Ordo Virtutum' (Play of the Virtues), the oldest surviving musical drama not attached to a liturgical ritual. Her scientific works, 'Physica' (Natural History) and 'Causae et Curae' (Causes and Cures), document the medicinal properties of hundreds of plants, stones, and animals, making her one of the founders of scientific natural history in Germany. Hildegard maintained a vast correspondence with figures including Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, King Henry II of England, and four popes, and she undertook four preaching tours — highly unusual for a woman of any era in the medieval Church. She was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012, only the fourth woman to hold this title.