Amanda Baltz December 11, 1998

From birth the "Sybil of the Rhine" was dedicated to the Roman Catholic Church. She was the tenth child of a wealthy and prominent family. Born in 1098, it was the custom to dedicate the tenth child to the service of God ("Life"). Early scholars give her parents names as Hilbert and Mechtildis, speaking only of their nobility. Many legends also make her the Countess of Spanheim, belonging to the family of Stein. The Princes of Salm are descendants of this saint (St. Hildegard). She was a very sick and weak child, having visions later believed to be caused by severe migraine headaches ("Life"). She is seen as the first woman in many fields. Hildegard produced numerous major works of theology, visionary writings, art, and music at a time in history where women were not listened to or respected. Her visionary writings leave her seen as a Christain mystic. Although proclaimed as a saint, the Catholic Church has not canonized her.

Hildegard entered the service of God at age eight. She had not received a very good education at home. She was sent to an Anchoress named Jutta, a sister of Count Meginhard, whom Hildegard’s father was a soldier for. Jutta belonged to a strict religious order much more strict than modern convents. At the Disenberg, Germany convent in the Diocese of Speyer, she learned to read and sing Latin psalms. But as an anchoress she led a life shut off from the world. Food would be passed through a small window in a room adjacent to the church. These anchoresses would even receive their last burial rights from the bishop before being confined in the anchorage ("Life"). In this time, she continued to have visions from God that she wrote down. Her lack of knowledge in language made it very difficult for her to do this and she had secretaries to help her write them down for her. When Jutta died in 1136, Hildegard was appointed as superior anchoress. She chose a new home, as she felt God needed her to do and many people followed. At Rupertsberg near Bingen on the Rhine, she settled in with eighteen sisters. Crowds of people flocked to her neighborhood from Germany and Gaul after word of her visions and wisdom. Many men, women, and state officals were drawn to her wisdom as well (St.Hildegard).

In 1141, she publicized Scivias, known as her greatest work. It took ten years for her to complete. It is prophetic throughout and speaks of Ezechiel and the Apocalypse. It describes her visions, tells of the fall of man and his redemption, the human soul and its struggles, the time to come, and the end of the world. It often tells one to live in fear of God (St.Hildegard). She also wrote music and text to her songs. Hildegard transformed a plain chant music style into the Gregorian chant (Hildegard). There is evidence that her songs and moral play Ordo Virtutum ("Play of Virtues") were even performed in her own convent. She composed seventy-seven liturgical songs. She also released other books of vision: Liber vitae meritorum (Book of Life’s Merits) and Liber divinorum operum (Book of Divine works). Not only did Hildegard write religious visionary books; she also wrote works of natural history and the powers of various objects. This book was known as Physica and Causae et Curae. Suprisingly these books do not contain any references to divine source or revelation. Her scientific views ere taken from ancient Greek cosmology. She coined many terms still used today in society. Such as: choleric, sanguine, phelegmatic, and melancholy to describe one’s personality. Her medicine consisted of consuming the right plant or animal that had the quality one was missing. She is even believed to write the first description of the female orgasm. Her writings have a very positive view of sexual relations. She wrote that the strength of semen determines the sex, while the amount of love determines the disposition of the child. If the seed is weak and the parents feel no love, then it leads to a bitter daughter ("Life").

Hildegard traveled extensively bringing the word of God and her visions to all. Even at age seventy-two, she traveled the Rhineland for the fourth time preaching reform for the church. During her last year of life, Hildegard had to undergo a trial. She buried a young excommunicated noble revolutionary, breaking ecclesiastical law by buring him in the ground next to her convent. She refuses the bishop’s order to dig up the corpse, by saying that the youth had confessed and died in grace and communion. Her convent is interdicted and all in her convent are unable to go to Mass, receive the sacraments, or to sing and hear Hildegard’s music. Hildegard does not give up and months before her death their rights are restored. She writes many letters as a result on the importance of music to an ethical and spiritual life. On September 17, 1179 at eighty-one she collapses and dies (Vision). She was buried in the Church of Rupertsburg (St.Hildegard).

In all her works, she exhibits poetical gifts. In 1858, a manuscript of nine books on treating plants, elements, trees, stones, fishes, birds, quadrupeds, reptiles, and metals is found (St. Hildegard). She is known as the first writer of the earliest surviving scientific book by a woman. In Liber simplicis medicinae, she gives Latin and German names for the species described and their medicial uses (Hutchinson). Much of what she wrote is in mysical terms. Yet her ideas are very modern. Believe it or not her ideas on universal gravitation are correct and are earlier than Newton’s by several centuries (Hildegard).

An extrodinary woman, Hildegard was very outspoken and often disagreed with the bishops and popes of the time. She set out to restore the Roman Catholic Church in wake of the corruption of the clergy. She argued with the emperor about the corruption who she had even written a vision about years earlier. She spoke out against him, calling him insane, as he gave in to anti-papism (Vision). Her visions are accounted for today by her sickness and migraine headaches that she suffered with. She managed to be a very influential woman even though she often collapsed from her frail health. It is unimaginable today that a woman of that time could have publicized so many books and so much music in that time period. Hildegard was ahead of her time. Her ideas are more modern than ancient. Her works on medicine and natural science have recently been recognized as genuine genius for her knowledge of concepts, which were discovered much later in history by others.