Hildegard of Bingen & His Writings

Jutta lived in a cell on the property of the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg. Jutta's seclusion seems to have been tiny than complete and Hildegard seems to have acquired some Latin and other facts of life from the monks. Gradu on the wholey, a number of other women joined them, forming the beginnings of an independent convent. The miss took the vows of a Benedictine at 15 and devoted the relief of her life to the "strict devotional discipline" of the order (Weeks 42).

When Jutta died in 1136 Hildegard was elected prioress. In 1150 she moved the group to Rupertsburg and later realised a nonher convent at Eibingen. Hildegard proved to be a pragmatical leader who was capable of dealing with all the problems of institutional management--which ranged from the "waging of ongoing legal feuds" to composing sacred music (Weeks 42). A capacious with all these aspects of her job, however, Hildegard had also felt that she was compelled to make her visions known to the world.

For as long as she could remember Hildegard had been "subject to visual disturbance" in which people and objects appeared to glow with light and which were accompanied by change physical symptoms "probably in the form of severe migraine" (Furlong 85). But a technical, scientific explanation of the visions is largely remote to understanding Hildegard. Twentieth-century distinctions between the natural and the miraculous bear little rese

Brunn, Emilie Zum, and Georgette Epiney-Brugard. Women Mystics in Medieval Europe. Trans. Sheila Hughes. parvenu York: Paragon, 1989.

As time passed Hildegard's visions became increasingly naturalistic and her interpretations of the symbolism of the visions began to " spread free of [the] traditional patterns" of "misogynous descriptions [that] prevailed" in perform discussions of women (Brunn and Epiney-Brugard 14). She did not contradict the prevailing claim that women were subordinate to men. She accepted this as a part of the natural order and the order of the church reflected in the Seraphim's wings. But she did produce an account of women "more official than that of the traditional account of Eve's role in the fall from pity" (Weeks 56).

It has often been pointed out that the emergence of women's visionary mysticism from the centre of attention of the twelfth century was, in large part, "compensation for the avenues of out-of-door activity barred to women" (Weeks 45). But, though misogyny had abated very little, in that location was a change in the general tenor of organized religion in the middle of the twelfth century that had particular relevance for women. Bernard of Clairvaux was one of the leading figures in the raising of new spectral expectations among the people. He taught that God was not merely a terrible, rarified power distant from the temporal world but an active voice presence in human life. People's notions of religious experience were modified by this "narrowing of the perceived distance between the providential and human" and this new conception, which was particularly relevant to women who felt excluded from religious life, also "gave sustenance to the desire for a mystical friendship of God" (Weeks 40).

Hildegard's visions were particularly well suited to the job of reinforcing Church authority. Unlike some later mystics whose visions were personal experiences of God, "a tolerant of mystic communion," Hildegard's visions were a means by which God relayed truths about(predicate) Christi
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