Hildegard+of+Bingen


 *  Hildegard of Bingen **

 __Overall Biography__  Hildegard of Bingen was a remarkable woman for her time. Not only was she learned, but also she was a composer, a writer, a prophetess, an abbess and much more. She held authority over many people and was able to control others by letting them think that they were in control. However by using her gender to make her seem weak, she was able to control powerful men without their knowing. 1]

 1] Baird, Joseph L., ed. //The Personal Correspondence of Hildegard of Bingen//. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2006. Print.

Hildegard of Bingen, born in 1098, was the youngest of 10 children. With 10 being a sacred number, her parents sent her to a convent in 1106 when she was eight. 2] Hildegard is the patron saint of The Day; among other things she was a teacher, a composer, and she saw visions of God. It was said "No woman since the Virgin Mary had received so great a gift from God." 3] Hildegard over the length of her lifetime wrote more than four hundred letters to many important people, including two popes. She wrote to Pope Eugenius III and in 1147-48, he gave Hildegard the right to transcribe her visions. The Pope declared them to be a prophecy. Hildegard was very sickly and was ill most of her life. She believed that her visions were somehow connected. Scientists now think that maybe her "visions" may have been side effects from migraines, but the Catholic Church will always call them miracles. Of course, she never married, and she spent most of her life as a nun in first a Benedictine monastery then in a convent. 4]

 2 ] "Hildegard of Bingen." //FORDHAM.EDU//. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 July 2010. .  3] Baird, Joseph L., ed. //The Personal Correspondence of Hildegard of Bingen//. Pg1  4]  Guibert, cited in Newman pg. 1

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">__Hildegard as a Composer__

Hildegard was a wonderful composer of liturgical songs her music was well above most musicians today. Hildegard's music style was like the Gregorian chant, even though she had never heard this form before. Almost all of her songs were liturgical, or had some underlining Christian theme. One of her poems and songs was Loving Tenderness.

Loving Tenderness

Loving tenderness abounds for all from the darkest to the most eminent one beyond the stars,

Exquisitely loving all she bequeaths the kiss of peace upon the ultimate King.

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This is an example of her work as a composer called Opus Arte.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">__Hildegard's Visions__

Hildegard had her visions from infancy and was not able to fully explain them until she was approximately the age of five; when she became a teenager she figured out that no one else saw the things that she was seeing. After realizing that she was the only one who saw these things she no longer spoke about them, even after she became an abbess in 1136. It took her until she was forty-two in 1141, that she had a prophetic vision saying "O fragile man, ashes of ashes, dust of dust say and write that thou seest and hearest” 5] With this vision, she knew that she must write down and spread the word of God that was brought to her through her visions.

5] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> Steele pg. 1 Hildegard of Bingen Scivias

__<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Hildegard's Letters __ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> Hildegard wrote letters to many important people such as archbishops and even two popes. Through these letters she was able to do many things such as obtaining the permission of the pope to write down her visions.In addition, she was able to get a convent just for her nuns under her charge as an abbess. In her letters although she is thought to be humble, she uses a lot of flattery and to some extent belittles herself and her gender in order to get what she wanted. 6]

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 90%;"> 6] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 11pt;">Baird, Joseph L., ed. //The Personal Correspondence of Hildegard of Bingen//. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2006. Print.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Mysticism and Heresy, Hildegard and NaProus NaProus was also a mystic, but unlike Hildegard, NaProus was a heretic. Her visions were mainly about herself, she compared herself to the Virgin Mary, and called the pope the anti-Christ. While Hildegard of Bingen wrote letters to the pope that showed great respect and love. Hildegard’s visions were about the trinity and Jesus in none of them did she herself appear.7]

7] Petroff, Elizabeth Alvilda. //Medieval Women's Visionary Literature//. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1986. Print.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Overview

Hildegard born in 1098 and died in 1179, she lived until she was 81. Hildegard became an abess when she was the age of 38 in1136. She had a terrible sickness that lasted her whole life. she had visions and after she was a teen she stoppes sharing them because they sometimes foretold the future. She was a Great composer; she wrote many litergical songs. she also wrote a book and over four hundres letters to "notables." She was reffered to by some people to be a mystic, but mostly she was seen as a God-fearing woman with a gift from God.

__Article Analysis 1__

Barbara Newman Hildegard of Bingen: Visions and validations

Focus: To clarify the relationship between Hildegard’s visionary life and prophetic mission.

|| <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Her intense and mysterious mode of seeing through her visions she had her whole life. || <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">That can explain why she insisted so vehemently on her lack of education.
 * || <span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: center;">Evidence || <span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: center;">Main Idea ||
 * Visionary life and prophetic mission

||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: center;">The three unimportant and interrelated benefits to her visions || <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">A Direct experience with God, a source of unmediated truth, and a form of public validation. || <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">This was augmented by her gender, led her no less to insist on the absolute and infallible character of her inspiration. ||
 * Her visions and her life || <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Hildegard perceived this extraordinary light from her infancy. || <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Decades were to pass before she understood the light and the figures she saw in it as a gift forom God. ||

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Implications: I agree with the argument that Barbra Newman has within the Article about the validation of Hildegard’s visions and how it affected her life and the way the Christian community respected her.

__Article Analysis 2__

Barbara L. Grant Five Liturgical Songs By Hildegard von Bingen (1091 - 1179)

Focus: Barbara L. Grant talks about Hildegard’s Songs and the effect they had upon late medieval music and Christianity.


 * || Evidence || Main Idea ||

Hildegard as a person || The only twelfth-century woman of whom we know as an author of visionary and scientific works, a composer, a correspondent with notables and lowlies, a prophetess, a abbess and a teacher. || She was a “token woman” In addition, she had conservative ideas about the roles of women outside the convent. ||

Her illness || She fought to find her own voice, a struggle which cost her years on incapacitation illness and which she has described for us in detail. || She won the right to record her visions from the pope. In a synod of 1147-48, he officially confirmed her gift of prophecy. As her work progressed, the illness subsided, but she was never entirely free of it || Her liturgical songs || She had many liturgical songs most are from the new testament and have true significance || Song number 71 is one of only two songs in the whole collection with no designation as to liturgical form or function. ||

Implications: Although the author says that she had a conservative view of women outside the convent I find it very hard to believe that due to her beliefs of the women within the church.

__Article Analysis 3__

Baird, Ed., Joseph L.. The Personal Correspondence of Hildegard of Bingen. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2006. Print.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Focus: Baird is focusing on the letters and the personal correspondence between Hildegard of Bingen and numerous people throughout her life.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 11pt;">
 * || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 11pt;">Evidence || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 11pt;">Main Idea  ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 11pt;">Visions || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 11pt;">She asked a nurse if she saw things other than her physical eyes, and she gave me no answer since she say nothing of them.(7) || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 11pt;">She began having visions as early as the age of three, and that she saw “things” in her spirit, while at the same time she saw with her physical eyes. (7) ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 11pt;">Weakness || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 11pt;">Hildegard always keeps the stress off herself as a “poor little form of a woman. || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 11pt;">In many of her letters she used phrases that deduced that she was weak making her seem less than what she was and the men more powerful. ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 11pt;">Childhood in seclusion || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 11pt;">Hildegard and Jutta lived in a room together with one door locked from the outside and a window for food and things. || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 11pt;">Hildegard spent most of her childhood in a room with a recluse named Jutta. ||

Implications: In the introduction of the book I find that Baird does a great job describing the major points of her life I do think he could have added more about her music.


 * Hildegard of Bingen: Visions and Validation
 * Author(s): Barbara Newman
 * Source: Church History, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Jun., 1985), pp. 163-175
 * Published by: [|Cambridge University Press] on behalf of the [|American Society of Church History]
 * Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3167233


 * Five Liturgical Songs by Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)
 * Author(s): Barbara L. Grant and Hildegard von Bingen
 * Source: Signs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Spring, 1980), pp. 557-567
 * Published by: [|The University of Chicago Press]
 * Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173606

Baird, Ed., Joseph L.. The Personal Correspondence of Hildegard of Bingen. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2006. Print.