Hildegard of Bingen Writings
The best-known writing of Hildegard of Bingen is a trilogy including Scivias (1141–52), Liber Vitae Meritorum, (Book of the Life of Merits), and Liber Divinorum Operum (Book of the Divine Works). These include records of her visions -- many are apocalyptic -- and her explanations of scripture and salvation history. She also wrote plays, poetry, and music, and today many of her hymns and song cycles are recorded today. She also wrote on medicine and nature -- and it's important to note that for her, as for many in medieval times, theology, medicine, music, and all those topics were unitary, not separate spheres of knowledge.Hildegard of Bingen - Feminist?
Today, Hildegard of Bingen is celebrated as a feminist; this has to be interpreted within the context of her times.On the one hand, she accepted many of the assumptions of the time about the inferiority of women. She called herself a "paupercula feminea forma" or poor weak woman, and implied that the current "feminine" age was thereby a less-desireable age. That God depended on women to bring his message was a sign of the chaotic times, not a sign of the advance of women.
On the other hand, in practice, she exercised considerably more authority than most women of her time, and she celebrated feminine community and beauty in her spiritual writings. She used the metaphor of marriage to God, though this was not her invention nor a new metaphor -- but it was not universal. Her visions have female figures in them: Ecclesia, Caritas (heavenly love), Sapientia, and others. In her texts on medicine, she included topics which male writers usually did not, such as how to deal with menstrual cramps. She also wrote a text just on what we'd today call gynecology. Clearly, she was a more prolific writer than most women of her era; more to the point, she was more prolific than most of the men of the time.
There were some suspicions that her writing was not her own, and could be attributed to her scribe, Volman, who seems to have taken the writings that she put down and made permanent records of them. But even in her writing after he died, her usual fluency and complexity of writing is present.
Hildegard of Bingen - Saint?
Perhaps because of her famous (or infamous) flouting of ecclesiastical authority, Hildegard of Bingen was never canonized by the Roman Catholic Church as a saint. She has been honored locally as a saint.Hildegard of Bingen - Legacy
Hildegard of Bingen was, by modern standards, not as revolutionary as she might have been considered in her time. She preached the superiority of order over change, and the church reforms she pushed for included the superiority of ecclesiastical power over secular power, of popes over kings. She opposed the Cathar heresy in France, and had a long-running rivalry (expressed in letters) with another whose influence was unusual for a woman, Elisabeth of Shonau.Hildegard of Bingen is probably more properly classified as a prophetic visionary rather than a mystic, as revealing knowledge from God was more her priority than her own personal experience or union with God. Her apocalyptic visions of the consequences of acts and practices, her lack of concern for herself, and her sense that she was the instrument of God's word to others, differentiate her from many of the (female and male) mystics near her time.
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