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Common Knowledge

Canonical name: Bingen, Hildegard of
Legal name: Bingen, Hildegard von
Other names: Hildegardis Bingensis (Latin)
Sybil of the Rhine (byname)
Saint Hildegard of Bingen
Hildegard von Bingen
VON BINGEN, Hildegard
BINGEN, Hildegard VON
Birthdate: 1098
Date of death: 1179-09-17
Burial location: Pfarrkirche, Eibingen, Germany
Gender: female
Nationality: Germany
Birthplace: Bermersheim, Germany
Place of death: Rupertsberg, Bingen, Germany
Places of residence: Bermersheim, Germany
Disibodenberg, Germany
Rupertsberg bei Bingen, Germany
Eibingen, Rüdesheim am Rhein, Germany
Education: Jutta
Occupations: nun
abbot
writer
composer
Organizations: Order of Saint Benedict
Roman Catholic Church
Awards and honors: Doctor of the Church
canonized 2012-05-10
Short biography: Blessed Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 17 September 1179), also known as Saint Hildegard, and Sybil of the Rhine, was a Christian mystic, German Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath. She became a nun at age 15. Elected a magistrate (abbess) by her fellow nuns in 1136, she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. She was a composer with an extant biography from her own time. One of her works, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama. She wrote theological, botanical and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, poems, and the first surviving morality play, while supervising miniature illuminations.

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Hildegard of Bingen's Doctor of the Church nickname in Catholic Tradition (October 2012)

Hildegard of Bingen to be named Doctor of the Church in Catholic Tradition (December 2011)

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Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen by Hildegard of Bingen

An aside: what happened with my car did have some life journey benefits, since if I hadn’t needed to go there to get help, I probably would have walked into that church in maybe six to eight months, and it probably would have been weird, because “I thirst” is actually a far less weird lead-in than, “I’ve been reading about the Samaritans; I hear that….”—right? And maybe I was supposed to go when I did because I heard a great sermon that explained my personal history to me…. And yeah, it’s oddly supporting to know—I mean, they couldn’t really help like that—but just to know that my crazy mom and I aren’t the only two spiritual gangsters with cash flow stickage, right…. My mom almost doesn’t want…. But yeah: it’s funny; I really liked the service and the sermon and the vibe; it was kinda what my old church ~wanted~ to be, on some level—the two sermons wouldn’t have been radically different, especially as words, right…. But yeah, I would’ve felt weird asking my old church for that kind of money, because I feel like their best days are behind them, and it’s not right to toss dirt in their grave, basically, right…. (When I first went to church I had no notion of anything but survival, whether I asked for something or not)…. But yeah, I love the ~message~ of my new church, but I also asked, because I assumed that the non-denom churches are doing better than the museum churches, right: don’t the statisticians say the unaffiliated (I mean, they’re kinda post-evangelical, post-Baptist, except that that’s INCREDIBLY misleading, right: there’s not a lot of the Indian hunter in them, right: they’re actually non-monochromatic, right….) are the ones growing their ranks, right….

There’s still so much about money I don’t understand.

But yeah: when money is better, I’ll have to rebuy this. I didn’t hate it or even disagree: but I didn’t understand it; like there wasn’t some word or concept that had me running to a search engine, right—but I didn’t feel the vibe. I didn’t vibrate on the same level as I did. My new pastor in his sermon explained my problem perfectly. I was Peter as the Farewell Talk in John gets going, right after Judas leaves. (And man, was I preoccupied about Judas, right. “The children have been betrayed! People aren’t being nice to the children ~~~!!!”). The sermon was about love, and about looking at what gets in the way of love. Vince was all, We all think we know love, right. Nobody reads a book that talks about Jesus and love and the children and everything, sober kindness and decent tenderness and all the rest of it, and throws down their napkin and says, No! I won’t live in a world where we love the children! ~you know? But love is scary and confusing, so we distract ourselves. First Peter asks Jesus which heaven realm he’s booked a cruise on, you know—‘tell me about heaven’. For many of my former-fellows, the Episcopalian et ceteras, this probably takes a modern, tech-y form of, like, Tell us why the dinosaurs died, Jesus. Fix my smartphone if you are the Son of God, and tell me which…. ~you know? But I was new age enlightenment-infused, and so more trad-y in some sense, right. “Will dolphins ever be reborn as Plato? What about Buddha, Jesus? Where can we score his books?” And nothing’s ever Totally Bad, and in effect these are beautiful things: the mind can be beautiful, but used as a substitute for love, to use the mind as avoidance…. It’s vain, you know. It’s caput. Bullshit…. And then, yeah, “Jesus I’ll die…. I’ll sacrifice myself for you, man…. Drive the nails right through my eyeballs….” You know: I’ll sacrifice myself for the poor people, and I’ll inspire all the rich people and all the happy people and all the good people to be nice and right and good to be sacrificed and miserable and proper: AND THEN, things will finally be good for the children, because the candy factory owners won’t be destroying the religion of the flower-children, right….

And that’s basically why, I mean, I shied away from formally impaling love, you know: but it’s like, I couldn’t get anything from it, and when Hildegard talked about love and nature and beauty or whatever she talked about, spirit-beauty and deep, deep love, I was like….

I would stare off into the middle distance and muse, Such strange informations….

There’s not a lot of, “tell me about the Buddha realms, Jesus” or “crush the candy factory owners, Jesus”, in Hildegard, you know: any more than she was plotting with the religious people to get the other religious people strung up, you know, like…. Well, like the bloody Church from the conversion of Europe, until…. I mean, I guess after a thousand years, give or take a few centuries, it kinda got attenuated, you know: the burnings and the killings, right…. Some people aren’t even afraid to look foolish to such an extent that they’ll say it wasn’t such a permissible thing, right, to be so persecutory and mind-bomb-y…. And you know, not to end on a negative note, but the right looks at that and says: But maybe if the Muslims start a nuclear war…. (shakes head sadly) Won so many wars for Jesus: but can I say we’ve won a ~Nuke~ war….

And yeah: then there are also people like me, up until I guess less than a year ago, who are almost making progress, almost doing all they can, but for whom love is a word hidden in untranslatable runes, carefully hidden beneath Freya’s dressing-table, right….

(shrugs) I’ll have to buy this book again. I’m pretty sure it will stay in print.… (more)

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goosecap | Mar 7, 2024 |

Hildegard of Bingen: A Spiritual Reader by Hildegard of Bingen

“Humanity, take a good look at yourself. Inside, you’ve got heaven and earth, and all of creation. You’re a world – everything is hidden in you.” –Hildegard of Bingen

She was a Benedictine abbess, artist, composer, dietician, naturalist, poet, travelling preacher, mystic, and political consultant. She was a self-doubter with acute certainty in a merciful and mysterious God; a gifted healer who suffered from illness her whole life. Meet the incomparable Hildegard of Bingen. Nourishing, challenging, and idea-bursting, her writings will stir and awaken your soul.… (more)

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StFrancisofAssisi | 1 other review | Jan 16, 2024 |

Hildegard of Bingen (CWS): Scivias (Classics of… by Mother Columba Hart

no idea where or when I bought this: will note when I remember ha

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Overgaard | 4 other reviews | Feb 12, 2023 |

Hildegard von Bingen-Werke : Komplette Werkausgabe by Hildegard von Bingen

A testament to her fame in her day is that her complete written works survive, including full scores of her music. 1100 years later, and still of huge interest, here they are, carefully produced by the nuns of her convent. She is profoundly original, thinking deeply about all sorts of things, at times far before her time, and but still very much a part of her time. The dense medieval prose is hard to read for us today, it's a time so long ago and a society far removed, but her inspiration and grace will touch all those who take the time to study it. And if you get one of the many recordings of her music, you can follow along with the scores here as well.… (more)

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thomashempel | Dec 19, 2022 |

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