The Roots of Christian Mysticism Session 12
Summary of Professor June Boyce-Tillman's "Hildegard of Bingen" talk, The London Christian Meditation Centre, St Mark's, Clerkenwell, 10 January 200

Introduction

There are three ways of accessing truth through (a) story (b) lecture and c) music.
Professor June Boyce-Tillman used all three ways during the course of the evening in order to introduce us to Hildegard of Bingen.

a) Hildegard’s story

(The text of the story which is by Jean Moore can also be found as chapter 1 in June Boyce-Tillman’s book The Creative Spirit.)

“I am Hildegard
I know the cost of keeping silent.
And I know the cost of speaking out
Hear my story.

Perhaps you know me as Hildegard of Bingen. It was several miles from Bingen that I was born, in the Nahe Valley in Germany, in the year of Our Lord 1098. Do you know the Rhineland? It is the most beautiful place-rich and green, moist and fruitful. The rolling hills stretch as far as the eye can see, crowned with lush forests pierced here and there with rocky crags and tall watchtowers. Below, the deep valleys are dotted with neat villages and tidy fields that yield ample sustenance for all humankind and their beasts. On the southern slopes, the carefully tended vineyards ripple like green waves lapping the skirts of the hills. And through it all flows the mighty river Rhine bringing life and greenness to the land, moisture to the air, and the means of movement and transport to all who live there. They call it now, I believe the Fatherland, but to me it will always be Mother.

For the earth is our mother, she is mother of all that is natural, all that is human. She is the mother of us all, for she contains within herself the seeds of all. The earth of humankind contains all moistness, all verdancy, all germinating power. It is fruitful in so many ways. All creation comes from it. Yet it contains not only the basic raw material of humankind, but also the substance of the incarnation of God’s son.

Being the tenth child, I was tithed to God, and sent at the age of eight to live with Jutta, a holy anchoress, who lived in a small house attached to the abbey of St. Disibod. From Jutta I learned so much: of everyday things, of the ever-present, all-encircling love of God (we are embraced by him), and of the Holy Spirit which flows like sap through our souls, bringing growth and fruitfulness. From my earliest childhood God revealed himself to me in many vivid ways: sometimes in words, sometimes images, sometimes music, sometimes all three, but always he showed himself in the splendour of the natural world. And I learned to see also the evil in the world-the injustice, the corruption of state and church, and sloth and carelessness of priests, the violation of the natural world and the denial of the giftedness of all creation. And I knew anger as well as joy. I looked and listened, I saw and I heard, but I kept silent.

Yet ever within me grew the pressure to speak out. But how could I, a woman, make my voice heard? Who would listen to me? Who would believe my words, not learned by rote from any human tutor? How could my words in any way be useful? I consulted my superiors and my spiritual director-people I was accustomed to respect and obey. They told me firmly it was not my place to speak out, my role was to tend the daily needs of my community and to pray ever faithfully-but silently. Eventually I became ill both physically and mentally. How could I then have recognised within me the burning torment spoken of by the prophets of the \Old Testament, when the Word of God burns in the heart and aches in the bones? It was not out of stubbornness, but out of supposed humility that I refused to speak, and I felt myself pressed down by the whip of God into a bed of sickness.

But behold in the forty-third year of my life’s course, I was taken up in a vision. In great fear and trembling I beheld a great radiance, and in it was formed a voice and the voice spoke to me, saying: “O frail human being, ash of ash, corruption of corruption, tell and write what you see and hear.” And so I rose up and set my hand to writing and behold, great power and strength were given me and I no longer felt beaten down. The words poured out of me in a torrent, a great overflowing of God’s World, his Spirit….And contrary to all my previous fears and timidity, I was heard, I began to set down my many visions in my first book which I called Scivias-Knowing the Way. It was to take me ten years to complete. People came to me from far and wide asking for spiritual advice and I entered into correspondence with many of the great folk of my day-rulers, nobles, leaders of religious communities-among them the Emperor Barbarossa and Bernard of Clairvaux. The Holy Father heard of me and when he came to a Papal Council in Trier, sent a commission to investigate me. They found me competent and authentic, and he wrote, commending and encouraging my writing.

By this time Jutta had died and I had been elected leader-abbess, you might say-of our small community of women. We had grown in numbers and more were coming every year, yet we were still crammed into Jutta’s tiny house. The monastery of St. Disibod had expanded too, taking up all the available land for their farms and buildings and they would not yield us an extra inch of space. At first I became anxious, then angry. Abbot Kuno was implacable. Can you imagine the endless committee meetings, the pleadings, the arguments, the counter-arguments and the endless frustration of not being heard? Eventually, we just packed our things and left, taking our dowries with us, without waiting for the men’s permission.

After much hardship we began to build a new house near Bingen which I dedicated to my dear St. Rupert. I myself supervised the building, making sure that all was spacious and comfortable. We even had piped water. Perhaps I remembered all those cold winter mornings, the journeys to the well and the breaking of ice on the washing trough. But more, I was concerned because I do not think our Creator God delights in our bodily discomfort, especially when it is self-inflicted. It has been said that the body is at war with the soul, but how can this be? He made us as whole beings and our souls can only find expression through the actions of our bodies. For I am persuaded that when the body and the soul act together in proper agreement, they receive the highest award of mutual joy.

In the years that followed, my sisters and I at St. Rupertsberg found new ways to worship God-in poetry, music and drama, sometimes wearing colourful robes and golden crowns-not, I may say, always with ecclesiastical approval! I continued to write and to set down in words and pictures the many visions in which God had become known to me. I wrote many books on a variety of subjects, including medicine and natural history as well as theology and the lives of the saints. My vast correspondence continued. When in my sixties I began to travel the length and breadth of Germany and I, a woman, preached from the pulpits of the great cathedrals and abbeys. Whenever I spoke of God’s justice I exhorted the leaders of the church and state to excise corruption and to work for the peace and harmony of all creation.

And in it, through it and round it was always the music, for music expresses most deeply the soul’s yearning to sing praises to its Creator, and echoes most clearly the harmony of heaven.

But in the last year of my life the music was silenced. It was a time of great grief and heavy sadness. We had buried in our cemetery a young man who had been excommunicated as a revolutionary and we refused to yield up his body. He had confessed and received absolution before he died and his bones were entitled to rest in hallowed ground. We were placed under an interdict by the Archbishop and forbidden to sing the office or to receive communion. I myself, though old and ill, went to the cemetery and removed all traces of the grave that it might not be violated, for I fear the justice of God more than the justice of men. Instructed in a vision, I wrote to the Archbishop, asking him to lift the interdict and reminding him that those who silence music in this life can have no fellowship with the praise of the angels in heaven. The interdict was lifted and the music continued but the words and songs I uttered came from no human voice; they were given to me in visions. God moves where he wills, and not to the glory of any earthly creature. But I am ever in fear and trembling, doubting my own capacities. But I lift my hands to God, that he may carry me as a feather, without power or strength of its own, is carried on the breath of the wind.

I died in the year 1179, but death did not silence me. Some of you, today, may hear my voice. I was eighty-one years old and so had kept silent for half my life and had spoken for half my life. Perhaps that is the right balance: taking in, receiving, and giving out. In and out-like breathing-the breath of God.”

(b) A lecture about Hildegard

Hildegard acquired a considerable reputation during her life- time but lost it relatively quickly after her death. This is the fate of many women mystics (as well as musicians)

How may she be regarded as a woman for our time? We owe her rediscovery partly to Matthew Fox and his creation spirituality. Matthew Fox did her a disservice in a way because he ignored the strand of justice that runs deep in her theology. God created all things to be in relationship. A fracture in that relationship is what she means by injustice. This is sin. She spoke powerfully against injustice.

She was an astonishing blend of radical and conservative. Hildegard was critical of the Church and its priests who she called ravening wolves for plundering the Churches. She never joined Bernard of Clairvaux in his Benedictine reforms but remained within the traditional Benedictine Order. She was criticized for the unclarity of her theology. To write obscurely may well have been part of her plan so that her writing meant one thing to some people and another thing to others.

When thinking about her it is important to maintain a balance between where she sits in her own time and where she sits in ours. She is a remarkable figure in the history of European theology, she is the first woman to have written on medicine and women’s issues and the first notated female composer. She is important for us because she reminds us of some of the value systems we have forgotten, for example the values of community, relaxation, nurture and intuition. Our society values instead excitement, the rational, the challenge and the individualistic. If she were around today she might well be confined to the back of a psychiatric ward!

She loved circles. This is clear from the paintings of her visions for example the Choirs of Angels, The Trinity in the Unity and The Human Being. Her paintings also show her to be an exuberant person who doesn‘t conform. For example she draws a frame and then puts things on the outside of it. Most people would draw a frame and keep within the frame.

She is important for the interconnectedness which she can bring to an age where knowledge is divided. Even while she was living knowledge was being divided into faculties at the university of Paris.

In the middle ages there were two sorts of medical texts a) texts about the theology of medicine and b) more practical “how to” books of remedies. When Hildegard wrote she brought the two together. It is difficult to tell sometimes whether she is writing theology, poetry or medicine. She writes in the following way about pregnancy:

“Then, as God wills it and as he arranged it, the breath of God comes which enlivens this form. Without the mother knowing it, the breath of life comes like a strong warm wind, like a wind that blows loudly against a wall and streams and fastens itself to every joint and limb of this shape. In this way, the various limbs of this form are gently separated from one another, just as the flowers unfold themselves in the warmth of the sun. But there is still such weakness in this form that it cannot move itself, but only lies there, sleeps, and barely breathes. The spirit of life penetrates the entire form, fills and strengthens it in its marrow and in its veins so that they grow more than before, until the bones are spread out over the marrow and the veins become so strong that they can contain the blood. Now the child begins to move, and the mother feels it as though she received a sudden kick; from then on it remains continually in motion. For the living wind, that is the soul, enters into this form, as was mentioned above, according to the will of almighty God, strengthens it, makes it capable of life, and wanders around within it like a caterpillar that spins silk from which it becomes covered and closed in as with a house. In this form, the spirit of life discerns where the soul can divide itself, bend, and turn about; it also pays attention to all the places where there are veins, dries them out like the inner walls of a reed, and joins itself with the flesh so that by the heat of its fire it becomes red like the blood because the soul is fire. Thus it penetrates the entire form of the child with its breath, just as an entire house will be illuminated by a fire at its centre.”

Hildegard’s medicine was set in the context of the medieval system of humours that went back to Galen in the second century and beyond him back to Hippocrates himself. It was also influenced by the four elements- Earth, Air, Fire and Water from which she derived a personality system.
Central to her system is the concept of Viriditas. This greening power is central to our immune system she says.

In healing she used herbs, crystals and metals. Emerald is particularly valuable.

Volmar was her scribe. His job was to take down her visions from dictation and not to change any of it except into better Latin.

She had visions from the age of 3 years old. They made her ill and were a nuisance to her. She interpreted her visions in images, words and music. It is possible that her visions were caused by migraine but as Oliver Sachs points out in The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat this doesn’t invalidate what she was given.

Her music was in some ways plainchant, in some ways not. It was probably written down by somebody towards the end of Hildegard’s life. There is an exuberance about her music as there is about her images of her visions. Her music is full of big leaps. She wrote an opera called The Play of the Powers (Ordo Virtutem). She works with the wisdom texts of the Old Testament. At one point Wisdom is hidden, at another she is in the market-place. The feminine figure of Wisdom is a diverse tradition. Hildegard creates large women figures for example Synagogia who paves the way for Ecclesia. As the figures are developed they begin to be divided up into the virtues. For example in her opera there are a number of virtues. She gives us a vision of the soul which is helped by the virtues. The only character who speaks rather than sings in the opera is the devil. That is because it is music that connects you to God and he isn’t! Her whole theology is set out in her opera rather than an intellectual tome.

In the Book of Life’s Merits she sets out her theology of virtues and vices in an effort to settle the dualism that plagues theology. She says that a vice is a twisted virtue. For example untwisted envy is love.

c) Music

We finished the evening with a musical meditation using images from Hildegard’s writings, readings from her poetry and parts of her hymn to the spirit.