Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen, not yet canonized as a saint, has become one of the most widely-recognized women of the medieval era. Dedicated in childhood to the Benedictine order of nuns, she began to publish her extraordinary series of visions relatively late in life. Desite all of the difficulties facing a woman who attempted to speak her conscience publicly, Hildegard nevertheless gained the patronage of the Church, preaching against heresy, and never fearing to write stern letters "speaking truth to power."

A series of mystical visions provided the impetus to her theological writings and energized her striking theological statements about Creation, the Fall, and the maternal nature of Wisdom as embodied in the Church. The title of our program is taken from a concept and image "viriditas" ("greeness") that exemplified for Hildegard the life of nature and of the spirit. Despite the proto-feminist cast of some of her statements, Hildegard was a woman of her times and of her social class, at one time earning a rebuke from a fellow abbess for what we would call the elitist tendencies of her convent.

We know her best today for the music, innovative in her time, which she composed for her hymns celebrating the Virgin Mary, the Church, and the patron of her convent, St. Disibod. Her last letters were a spirited defense of her convent against the Interdict that forbade her nuns any music in their spiritual work. For Hildegard, music and song were an intrinsic part of human nature and one of our most potent counterbalances to the effects of the Fall.

Links to Other Sites Devoted to Hildegard:

Hildegard of Bingen HomePage: music links, images, bibliography, discography, and glossary.