Hildegard, the Benedictine nun dear to Pope Benedict XVI
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There is much talk of Pope Benedict XVI’s revolutionary act, done with grace and kindness: his resignation, which he resigned on February 11, 2013. But Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger also took other courageous decisions, such as proclaim Hildegard of Bingen Doctor of the Church. It was October 7, 2012, a few months after the announcement of the extension of his liturgical worship to the Universal Church. A strong choice, that of appointing the German mystic, who lived in the heart of the Middle Ages, as a doctor of the Church. A resolute personality, a soul of great substance. She was a writer, musician, cosmologist, theologian, healer, philosopher, poet, political adviser and prophetess. She is an unconventional character, who perhaps, if she had lived elsewhere or had belonged to a less famous family, she would have been burned at the stake, judged by a Church easy to condemn for witchcraft. Fortunately, however, Hildegard managed to find her space in the Church of those times, with her determination, to the point that Pope Eugene II authorized her to write and publicly exhibit her visions, granting her the possibility of preaching outside the convent. Not a small thing for a woman, an abbess of the Middle Ages. Thus Hildegard left humanity with an important legacy of knowledge.
A life of faith
She was born in the summer of 1098 in Rhenish Hesse, the last of ten children of the noble Vendersheim family. It was the time of the Crusades. At the age of eight, due to her failing health, she was placed by her parents in Disibodeberg Abbey, where she received the teachings of the aristocratic abbess, Jutta of Sponheim, whom she then replaced many years later. She took her vows between 1112 and 1115. As a Benedictine nun, she founded the Rupertsberg monastery in Bingen in 1150. Many noble girls knocked on her door, as the community lived in joy and concord in the new monastery, arousing admiration. Also because in the convent there was a rule that nuns should not cut their hair or wear dark cassocks, but rather colorful clothes. “The mother surrounds her daughters with such love, and the daughters submit to their mother with such reverence, that she can scarcely distinguish whether it is the daughters or the mother who are victorious. They zealously practice reading and singing and you can see them intent on writing books, weaving sacred vestments or engaged in other manual work». After 10 years she founded another monastery on the opposite bank of the Rhine, in Eibingen. Between 1159 and 1170 he made four pastoral journeys, preaching in the cathedrals of Cologne, Trier, Liège, Mainz, Metz and Wurzburg. And this despite his slender and delicate physique, which he had to deal with the difficulties of moving at the time. He died on September 17, 1179. His liturgical cult falls on September 17.
He confessed his visions only after the age of forty
From an early age she had visions. As a child she thought that everyone could communicate with Heaven. Only after her in forty years did she have the courage to talk about it. “Manifest the wonders you learn… Oh you frail creature… she speaks and writes what she sees and hears,” she said to herself. Hildegard left prophetic books to mankind. Overcoming her resistance and regaining her physical strength thanks to her medicines that she produced with medicinal plants from her garden (which she cultivated personally), she began to communicate those visions that had accompanied her since younger age. She wrote her first work in 1151, the “Scivias”, which was followed in 1158 by the “Liber Vitae Meritorum” and in 1174 by the “Liber Divinorum Operum”.
He composed a considerable amount of musical works, collected under the title of “Symphonia harmoniae celestium revelationum”. He also wrote treatises on natural sciences, where he collected medical and botanical knowledge. Hildegard’s naturalistic writings are gathered in the “Liber subtilitatum diversirum naturarum creaturerum”, which in the manuscript tradition was then divided into two parts. Treatises that even today are a source of inspiration for doctors and pharmaceutical companies. “I am an uneducated being, and know nothing of the things of the outer world, but it is inwardly in my soul that I am educated,” he explained.
From the holistic conception of man to viriditas
Her fame spread throughout Europe, also because she became the interlocutor of Pope Eugene II, Saint Bernard of Chiaravalle and the emperor Federico Barbarossa. Relations with the latter broke down after the criticism leveled against the decision to appoint two antipopes, putting Pope Alexander III on the run from Rome. But if these aspects of Hildegard’s life are known and reported in history books, the contribution of her who gave the abbess to medicine, with her science treatises, is less known. In some ways it is amazing and tremendously contemporary his holistic view of health and healing, which unites macrocosm and microcosm. “By means of this great egg-shaped figure, which is the universe, the invisible secrets of the eternal are made visible”, he wrote in Sci Vias. He introduced the concept of viriditas, «the breath of life which is present in various degrees and intensities in all that exists» and which plays a key role in achieving balance and psychophysical well-being: when it runs out and loses its innate strength, the organism falls ill . Viriditas, therefore, is a complex concept, understood as energy, life, healing. «O viriditas nobilissima, who have roots in the sun, and in candid serenity you shine in the wheel that no earthly height contains, you are surrounded by the embrace of divine mysteries. Shine like the red dawn and burn like the flame of the sun. In his books he indicates herbs and medicines that make it possible to recover the energy of the universe. Even today it is possible to benefit from Hildegard’s remedies, usable as medicines made with plants, which the Benedictine nun knew well. These are preparations with medicinal herbs often produced as elixirs. “In the whole of creation, in the trees, herbs, plants, animals, birds and even in the noble stones, there are hidden therapeutic forces”. Furthermore, Hildegard already knew that our body, to feel good, must be in mutual harmony with the foods it introduces. She was therefore an ante litteram nutritionist. In fact, he divided foods into two categories: those that promote health and those that harm it.
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