Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen , 1098-1179, German nun, mystic, composer, writer, and cultural figure, known as the Sibyl of the Rhine. An aristocrat educated in a Benedictine convent, she began experiencing mystical visions as a child. Entering religious life c.1116, she became an abbess in 1136 and founded her own convent at Rupertsberg near Bingen c.1147. Mystical and worldly, she was deeply immersed in religious life yet also involved in political and cultural affairs, maintaining a lively and wide-ranging correspondence. Her theological magnum opus, Scivias (c.1151), contains 26 visions. Today she is best known for her richly lyrical liturgical poetry set to her own innovative monophonic chants, composed mainly in the 1140s and collected in the 1150s. She also wrote a medical encyclopedia, scientific treatises, works of natural history, lives of saints, and other works. Widely proclaimed a saint, she has not been canonized; nonetheless, her feast day is celebrated on Sept. 17.

Hildegard of Bingen, St (1089–1179), German abbess, scholar, composer, and mystic. A nun of the Benedictine order, she became Abbess of Diessem in 1136, later moving her community to Bingen. She wrote scientific works, poetry, and music, and described her mystical experiences in Scivias. Her feast day is 17 September.

Hildegard of Bingen, St (1098–1179), Abbess of Rupertsberg, near Bingen. Born of a noble family and apparently subject to supernatural religious experiences from early childhood, at the age of 8 she was entrusted to the care of Bl Jutta, a recluse attached to the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg. On Jutta's death in 1136, she succeeded her as Abbess of the community which had gathered round her. She moved the community to Rupertsberg.

Her Scivias (probably intended as an abbreviation of ‘scito vias [viventis luminis]’), dictated between 1141 and 1151, record 26 visions; they show her conception of salvation-history leading to the Last Judgement. It was followed by the Liber vitae meritorum, devoted to a disputation of the virtues and vices and her vision of the joys and torments with which they are rewarded in the afterlife, and the Liber divinorum operum, containing visions of the cosmos, earth, and created things. An important element in the Scivias is a body of dramatic songs, also used in her musical play, the Ordo virtutum. Her other works include musical compositions and two medical treatises. Feast day, 17 Sept.