Hildegard of Bingen
A divine life-giving power, which she called greenness, binds body, soul and all creation together, and the human being mirrors the whole cosmos.
Placement
Benedictine abbess, visionary, composer and writer on nature: a cosmos in which body, soul and creation are bound together by the divine “greening power” (viriditas).
Key ideas
- Visionary theology
- Viriditas (greening power)
- Human being as microcosm
Influence
Influenced by 1
Augustine
influenced by disputed
Hildegard’s theology of creation and the soul shows Augustinian traits, absorbed through monastic reading; as she alludes to rather than cites the Fathers, direct reading is disputed. Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias (1151); A. Meis Wörmer, ‘Influencia agustiniana en la comprensión de la racionalidad de Hildegard von Bingen (s. XII)’, Peregrino 23 (2002)
Evidence: AI draft
Augustine › 354–430
Works
- 1151Scivias
“Know the ways”: twenty-six visions of creation, redemption and the end of time, with their interpretation.
Position
From childhood Hildegard had visions, which she began to record in 1141 at a divine command; Pope Eugene III encouraged her work. In Scivias and later books she describes what she saw – the cosmos, the fall, redemption and the end of time – and interprets it. Her central idea is viriditas, the “greening power”: God’s vital force that makes plants grow and keeps body and soul healthy. The human being is a microcosm mirroring the whole cosmos. She also wrote on nature and medicine and composed over seventy liturgical songs and the sung morality play Ordo Virtutum. In 2012 she was declared a Doctor of the Church.
Life & context
Hildegard was born in 1098 at Bermersheim near Alzey, the tenth child of a noble family, and as a girl was entrusted to the anchoress Jutta at the monastery of Disibodenberg. In 1136 she succeeded Jutta as head of the women’s community, later founding her own convents at Rupertsberg near Bingen and at Eibingen. She corresponded with popes and emperors, undertook preaching journeys and died in 1179.
Further main works
- The Book of Life’s Merits (Liber vitae meritorum, 1158–1163)
- The Book of Divine Works (Liber divinorum operum, 1163–1174)
- Physica (c. 1150–1160)
- Ordo Virtutum (c. 1151)
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