Hildegarda Germanica

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Hildegarda Bingensis 16 septembris 1098 - 17 septembris 1179. Germana fuit magistra et abbatissa et mystica et poesiae musicaeque auctrix. Rheni sibyla nuncupata.

[recensere] Vita

Hildegarda nata est in nobilium familia

[recensere] Divinae Harmoniae

Musica gratissima erat Hildegardae. Describebat illam ut viam ad paradisi laetitiam et pulchritudinem recipiendas. Secundum Hildegardam, ante culpam, pulchram Adamus vocem habebat et cum angelis Domino canebat laudes. Ab homini casu, musica mundana creata et instrumenta musicalia facta ad Deum recte adorandum.

Hildegard wrote hymns and sequences in honor of saints, virgins and Mary. She wrote in the plainchant tradition of a single vocal melodic line, the predominant method of liturgical singing in the 12th century.

Currently her music is undergoing a popular revival and enjoying public success. One group, Sequentia, recorded virtually all of Hildegard's musical output in time for the 900th anniversary of her birth in 1998, including examples of Hildegard's metaphorical writing, imbued with vibrant descriptions of color and light, that occur in her visionary writings.

[recensere] Significance

Hildegard was a powerful woman by the standards of the Middle Ages. She communicated with Popes such as Eugenius III and Anastasius IV, statesmen such as Abbot Suger, German emperors such as Frederick I Barbarossa, and on one occasion with St. Bernard of Clairvaux who although he reportedly advanced her work at the Synod of Trier 1147/48, seemed to have little regard for her as evidenced from the one letter from him she received. Nevertheless many Abbots and Abbesses asked her for prayers and opinions on various matters. She traveled widely, giving public speeches, a rarity for a woman of the time.

Hildegard was one of the first saints for which the canonization process was officially applied, but the process took so long that all four attempts at canonization (the last was in 1244, under Pope Innocent IV) were not completed, and remained at her beatification. However, she was already called a saint by the people before the canonization attempts. As a result of the long-standing devotion of the people to Hildegard, her name was taken up in the Roman martyrology at the end of the 16th century without a formal canonization process, earning her the title of saint. Her feast day is September 17. The shrine with the relics of Hildegard is in her second monastery in Eibingen near Rüdesheim (on the Rhine).