HILDEGARD OF BINGEN, Saint. - Mystic, called, because of her importance, the "prophetess of Germany," b. of the noble Vermersheim family at Bermersheim (province of Rheinhessen) in 1098 (cf. M. Schrader, Heimat und Sippe der deutschen Seherin St. Hildegard, Salzburg-Leipzig 1941; cf. also: id., Die Heimat und Abstammung der hl. Hildegard, in Studien und Mitteilungen zur Gesch. des Benediktinerordens, 54 [1936], pp. 199-221; 57 [1939], pp. 117-133), d. at Bingen on 17 Sept. 1179. At the age of three she began to enjoy heavenly visions; at eight she was entrusted to the direction of Jutta of Spanheim, who at the abbey of Disibodenberg received noble maidens to prepare them for monastic life; at fifteen she took the Benedictine habit. On the death of Jutta (1136) she accepted the direction of the small community, which between 1147-50 she transferred to the monastery she founded at Bingen. In 1165 she founded a branch house at Eibingen near Rüdesheim.
It may be said that her whole life was one uninterrupted illness; which, however, did not prevent her from undertaking numerous journeys for the good of the Church, of the clergy and of religious persons, nor from carrying on a prodigious literary activity, all the more so since, because of her scant education (Jutta had taught her only the Psalms of David), she had to resort to many secretaries and correctors. Numerous miracles made her tomb famous; a process of canonization was even ordered by Gregory IX, which never reached completion (cf. Martyr. Romanum, p. 403); nevertheless she was venerated as a saint from the 13th century onward. Her feast falls on 17 Sept.
Her principal works are: Liber Sciuias (= "Sciuias lucis") composed between 1141-51, in which she describes her visions and her prophecies, approved in 1147 by Eugenius III and by St. Bernard (PL 197, 383-738; better in J. B. Pitra, Analecta sacra spicilegio Solesmensi parata, VIII [Montecassino 1882], pp. 503-17, 600-603) and in A. Damoiseau, Novae edit. opp. omnium s. Hildegardis experimentum [2 vols., Sampierdarena 1893-99]); Liber vitae meritorum, between 1159-64, on the virtuous life (Pitra, op. cit., pp. 1-224); Liber divinorum operum, composed between 1164-70, in which from natural things she derives symbols and expressions of spiritual things (PL 197, 741-1038); other works treat of music, medicine, literature, natural sciences (particularly noteworthy, amid puerile things, the opinion that the earth revolves around the sun, that the sun is the center of the world, that the fixed stars move, that the blood circulates in the organism); and furthermore poems and musical songs (Pitra, op. cit., pp. 441-67) and an important collection of letters, which show her as a counselor
(In D. Mauro Bäckeler, Die heilige Hildegard von Bingen, s.a.) HILDEGARD OF BINGEN, saint - The Saint dictates her visions. Miniature from the small codex of I. (1151-79) - Wiesbaden, Nassau State Library.
in the most important questions concerning the reform of ecclesiastics and of religious persons (145 letters in PL 197, 145-382 and another 145 in Pitra, op. cit., pp. 320-440; 518-82).
Bibliography16 works
Celestino Testore