Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179)

Abstract

After the tragic death of Hypatia of Alexandria, the school also faded and dispersed, after which the pursuit of knowledge passed to ecclesial institutions. Afterwards we have no notices of female scholars or educated women until the ninth century, which in any case came from aristocratic or royal families placed in monasteries. In such a sphere we can find eminent Abbesses, the most notable of which is Hildegard of Bingen, a German Benedictine nun who lived in the twelfth century and the most famous among the religious and medieval female scientists. She was born in the summer of 1098 in Bermersheim, near Alzey, in the now German region of Saxony, at the time part of the Holy Roman Empire. She was the last of ten children of Mechtild of Merxheim-Nahet and Hildebert of Bermersheim, an aristocratic family, and was sickly for much of her childhood. At the age of eight Hildegard was locked up in a convent at Disibodenberg led by an older nun named Jutta (in some sources cited as her aunt) who was the daughter of Count Stephan II of Sponheim. Here she had the opportunity to study and work and later to write several treatises on different subjects ranging from medicine to cosmology. Hildegard rose through the ranks of the Church. In 1136, upon Jutta’s death, Hildegard was unanimously elected by her fellow nuns as “magistra”, which is the Latin word for a female teacher or mistress. She went so far as to convince the Church to take the unusual step of allowing her to found two monasteries: Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. The first known female composer of sacred music and a painter, she also wrote works on cosmology that are contained in two books which are very good representatives of her specific way of writing. Actually, Hildegard wrote these works as visions coming from divine inspiration, describing their origin in this way: “I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God”.In an epoch where science and theology were intertwined at a fundamental level, and females’ knowledge was hardly accepted, or in any case confined to very specific fields and practices, this was of great help for spreading her theses and giving greater credibility to her writings. Sickly from birth, in her Vita Hildegard states that since a very young age she had experienced visions, and all of her works were illustrated by very detailed explanatory miniatures in which she portrayed herself in a corner in the act of observing “her visions”.