June 2025
From the 12th to the 15th May, Sarum hosted an intensive teaching week on Hildegard of Bingen’s text, Scivias, as this year’s iteration of our MA module, Text and the Christian Tradition. Previous iterations have focused on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonaventure’s The Life of St Francis, and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. This year’s module featured sessions by the Christian Spirituality programme leader, Michael Hahn, as well as three guest speakers: Lauren Cole, a scholar of Hildegard’s medical texts and their manuscript transmission; William Flynn, an expert on medieval music as a form of exegesis; and Mary Sharratt, a novelist who has written several books imagining the lives of medieval women, including Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen.
The Dom Gregory Dix Lecturer in Christian Spirituality, Michael Hahn, reflects on the week’s learning with a short introduction to the mystic’s work and life.
Sarum College has a long-held focus on Benedictine spirituality. As well as sharing our grounds with a community of Benedictine monks, Sarum prizes itself for its Benedictine hospitality. Although Benedict originally wrote his rule (c. 530) for his male monastic communities, it quickly came to be used by cloistered women with only minor adjustments. While in a marketplace of rules available in the early Middle Ages, by the 9th century, patronage for the rule by the Carolingians meant that in German territories it was the standard monastic rule. It is unsurprising, then, that when one of the most remarkable theologians (male or female) of Christian history entered an abbey in Germany in 1112, she lived by this rule. Born as the tenth child of a noble family, Hildegard of Bingen was tithed (literally: one-tenth) to the church and was given as a ward to the famous anchoress Jutta of Sponheim who was enclosed within the grounds of the male monastery at Disibodenberg (in the Rhineland-Palatinate). While the Benedictine rule promoted moderation and was far less harsh than many other rules, Jutta was an ascetic of the highest order, using self-flagellation, hairshirts and more gruesome techniques I won’t mention here.
Hildegard’s Life
Having grown up witnessing this, when Hildegard was elected prioress of a growing community of nuns upon Jutta’s death, she took a different path to her former teacher. Hildegard was very moderate and in her letters tried to dissuade her enquirers from harsh penance and practices. She wrote a commentary on Benedict’s rule particularly focusing on its overall spirit of moderation. She also acknowledged (as many did) the importance of the rule’s adaptability to different contexts and lived experiences, and, for example that specific clothing requirements for the 6th century male communities Benedict initially wrote for were not applicable to her 12th century community of noble-born nuns.
While she had experienced visions from the age of 5, Hildegard had been discouraged (presumably by Jutta) from speaking about these. However, after becoming prioress, these visions became more intense and God instructed her to write these down. Having ignored God and fallen ill, Hildegard began to write these on wax tablets, with her confessor and scribe, Volmar writing these notes on parchment. Hildegard claimed these visions and her understanding of them came directly from God and claims she had visions of the “shadow of the Living Light” or, on very rare occasions “the Living Light” or “the Fountain of Life” itself. Women writers of this period had to know how to negotiate the patriarchal system, and Hildegard was particularly astute at doing so. She used the traditional humility trope of women claiming to be a weak, poor, little lady who was uneducated and unskilled in writing. Most of all she claimed her writings came directly from God – putting them on a par with Scripture. But Hildegard also knew how to gain useful support and collaboration, and she sent some of her vision accounts to Bernard of Clairvaux, the mystical theologian par excellence of the 12th century as well as a political advisor and Pope- and King-maker. Bernard authenticated her vision accounts and presented them to Pope Eugene who (Hildegard tells us) approved of them too.
With the approval of the two most influential men in Christendom, Hildegard gained much fame and attention. At this point, in the mid-1240s, Hildegard was told by God to move the women away from the men’s community at Disibodenberg. After much argument, the abbot was convinced this was God’s desire, and Hildegard moved about 18 nuns and Volmar to the abbey of Rupertsberg (on the Rheine) which had to be reconstructed. Being able to develop and foster this female monastic community as she wanted – as well as founding a sister or daughter community across the Rheine at Eibingen – Hildegard was very moderate and also only permitted noble women who she let wear diadems and grow their hair long. When Hildegard was questioned by another Abbess (Tengswich), who challenged Hildegard with Scripture, Hildegard rebutted Tengswich appealing to both Scripture and the Living Light. Hildegard makes clear that by allowing only women of one social class, there would be greater unity in the convent. We might also consider that such women were more likely able to read and speak eloquently in Latin, allowing them to participate more fully in the rich liturgical life of the convent, and would have brought with them substantial dowries – essential for any burgeoning convent.
Hildegard’s Writings
As well as a great monastic reformer, Hildegard is perhaps best known for her writings in many genres. She wrote three books of Visions: Scivias (literally: Know the Ways [of the Lord]), The Book of Life’s Merits, and The Book of Divine Works. Each book was divided into three sections of unequal length, containing several vision accounts. These accounts consist of a description of the vision itself, a phrase-by-phrase explanation and exploration of the vision, and then various theological and ethical teachings which tended to relate to the vision (a vision of Adam required teachings on sexual practice, for example). From early manuscripts come quite striking and detailed illuminations (colour images) of the vision accounts, although sometimes not quite matching exactly to the specifics of the vision. It is thought that Hildegard may have had some initial input into the illuminations’ design – and they are similar in style to the one surviving altar cloth from Rupertsberg – but that the majority of the work on the illuminations was not Hildegard’s.
As well as these three great vision books, Hildegard wrote many other texts, including two scientific and medical works, many compositions, homilies on the Gospels, and letters sent by Hildegard to a vast array of figures (with many letters written to Hildegard also surviving). Although we would think of a polymath (a modern term) as someone who was able to write expertly on many subjects (something Hildegard certainly did), what is particularly remarkable about Hildegard’s writing is that her theological views were visible across her textual genres and this intertextuality was deeply layered in her works. This can be seen across all her works but Hildegard also grew in confidence as a writer and so – for example – her final vision book, The Book of Divine Works revisits many of her themes from Scivias but incorporates into them her cosmological and medical knowledge from her other genres. Scholars today have picked up many of these layered elements of Hildegard’s theology. As William Flynn emphasised in our teaching week, despite studying Hildegard for over 35 years, he and other scholars have a much poorer sense of this than Hildegard’s own nuns who copied her manuscripts, sung her compositions, lived by her medical works and embroidered images in the same style as Scivias’s alterations: they lived out this intertextuality.
As such it would be a mistake to extract single aspects of Hildegard’s theology without contextualising it in her wider theological worldview. Yet it is helpful to pull out a few major aspects of her theology and to introduce them here.
Hildegard’s Theology
Underlying all of Hildegard’s theology is her cosmology. Her famous vision account and its corresponding illumination of the cosmos as an egg from Scivias is – as per her time – geocentric. But for Hildegard it is particularly important to recognise that the human person (including the human body) is a microcosm of the macrocosm of creation. As such, particular aspects of the human body, its actions and human virtues are compared to specific aspects of creation. What this means is that Hildegard’s worldview and her theology are both intimately related to ideas of order and balance. This draws from views at the time that the four elements of nature were analogous to the four humours of the human person (which dictated personality) – in either case, when balance is lost, things go wrong.
An important aspect of this idea is the term viriditas, not original to Hildegard but which takes on new meaning and significance in her works. Difficult to translate precisely, viriditas encompasses the God-given greening power present in all nature and the cosmos, inspired by the very green landscapes that would have surrounded Hildegard at both her convents. As humans are microcosms of creation, viriditas is also key to human (and spiritual) order and wholeness. Viriditas is meagre in creation after the Fall, and so redemption through the Incarnation includes its reincorporation into creation (including the human).
The Fall is a very interesting and prominent aspect of Hildegard’s theology and, although many popular writers such as Matthew Fox have suggested that Hildegard is an example from whom we could suggest a concept of “Original Blessing” based on lifting specific quotations out of their context, it is clear from Hildegard’s texts that she strictly holds to a classical view of Original Sin (from Augustine). Despite this, Hildegard is subtle in slightly reorienting the place of Eve. Although in some texts she follows the classical idea that Eve and Mary are opposites (as mother of death and life, as lacking and persevering in faith, or as being led astray and led to God by an angel, for example), at other times she brings them together in more complementary ways. For example, she focuses on how Eve had originally been a virgin and had been mother of all, roles that Mary goes on to perfect. Hildegard has a particularly strong Mariology and through careful wordplay, Hildegard argues that Mary redeemed womankind, including Eve. The importance of Mary links to Hildegard’s view of the Incarnation. Unlike the Franciscans of the 13th century or Julian of Norwich of the 14th, Hildegard is not focused on Christ bleeding from the cross. Rather it is the entire act of the Incarnation that is so important for her.
Hildegard’s Legacy
Hildegard’s legacy is substantial. Being used by both Protestant and Catholic reformers in the Middle Ages, the survival of her life legacy was concretised perhaps particularly in her inclusion in 1725 in the Acta Sanctorum, a major collection of saints’ lives compiled by the Bollandists (in Antwerp). In the controversies around mysticism around 1700 Hildegard was likewise used both to critique and promote mysticism. The Anglican Edward Stillingfleet in his 1671 A Discourse Concerning the Idolatry Practised in the Church of Rome, Hildegard is listed alongside many other medieval female mystics as being those whose revelations are “so much approved by the Church of Rome” but which are “contradictory to each other.” Conversely, the Anglican rector of St Augustine’s in Hackney includes Hildegard among his “Famous Inlighten’d Virgins” as an example of the (in his view very positive) “Mystical Divinity.” Although Hildegard scholarship blossomed in her native Germany from the mid-19th century onwards, it was not until the 1980s when Anglophone scholarship flowered.
Today, Hildegard’s life and texts are used and held up in a vast array of contexts, some more and some less faithful to her theology and worldview. Her medical remedies are still used in Germany, her writings and reform work engaged with particularly by feminist theologians and – perhaps most famously – her magnificent and transformative symphonies are performed and listened to worldwide.
Although Hildegard’s case for canonisation was opened within 50 years of her death, this was never completed in the Middle Ages due to lack of evidence provided to the papacy. Pope Benedict (himself both German and a scholar of medieval theology) with much assistance from the nuns of Hildegard’s abbeys, canonised Hildegard in 2012. Within six months, Hildegard was also made a Doctor of the Church, one of only four women and only 36 people to be named in this list. As an addition to sainthood, Doctors of the Church are celebrated for their writings and for their immense intellectual talents and abilities. Although Hildegard – very much an astute woman of the 12th-century Church – had to include her theology within many forms but not in the genres that her contemporary school masters or the 13th century Thomas Aquinas or Bonaventure wrote in, she was, 850 years later, recognised by the Catholic Church as being very much their intellectual equals.
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Dr Michael Hahn is the Programme Leader for Postgraduate Programmes in Christian Spirituality. View his bio
If you would like to find out more about the MA in Christian Spirituality which is taught through modules such as this one on Hildegard of Bingen. Please visit our website or email Michael Hahn at mhahn@sarum.ac.uk.
Photo credit: The manuscript images used here are from the Healthy Hildegard website.
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