The Feminist Mystic of the Middle Ages

The remarkable life of Hildegard von Bingen.

Image: Hildegard of Bingen, medievalists.net

Humanity, take a good look at yourself. Inside, you’ve got heaven and earth, and all of creation. You’re a world—everything is hidden in you. 

—Hildegard, Causes and Cures 

Sometimes things are not as they seem. What may look to be the most trying and difficult of situations may hold the seeds for the most beautiful of flowers to bloom. Pure potential resides in the depths of uncertainty. And while it may appear to be a relinquishing of control, losing our way and feeling cast aside may in fact be a return to the safeguard of divine movement. There is power in finding oneself adrift and removed from any anchor holding us in position. Such power flourished within the life of a young girl who was cast aside, sent away, against her will, to live a life utterly out of her control. Eight-year-old Hildegard of Bingen, tenth child born into a noble German family, was tithed to the church, as was common in the 12th century, in order to live her life in submission to the Benedictine order. 

This was customary in those dark times, darkest the most for girls and women. But Hildegard's fate was even more dire than the norm of that era. Girls had two choices. Be given away in marriage to a man chosen by the family, or renounce the common life and dedicate oneself to being married to Christ. Even within those confines, Hildegard did not have a choice. She was forced to accept her fate not just as a renunciate but far worse, to be “entombed” while still alive in a cell with another girl only five years her senior, for the rest of their lives.

The Entombment

Image: medievalwomen.org

While the idea of voluntary entombment is anathema to modern sentiment, in the Middle Ages this was a not wholly uncommon choice for those who wished to dedicate themselves to God and the church. It was also a way to escape the harsh reality of life where poverty, disease, and early death were the norm. Being bound to a church at least meant that basic needs would be met. Although when the details of Hildegard’s surroundings are known, it is revealed as barely a life at all. 

I imagine her. A young girl, a lover of the natural world, having adventures in the forest with her favorite brother, all of a sudden removed from everything she knew, taken to a church to serve as a companion to the anchoress there. An anchoress, from the Greek word for “one who has withdrawn”, takes the burial rites while still alive, and, while not buried in the ground, is sealed into a small room attached to a church to live out her remaining life. The promise was that these girls would be dead to the world but alive to their holiness within.

There Hildegard found herself laid on the ground, ashes covering her body, hearing the last rites, being placed into the cell and watching dumbfounded as the men of the church sealed her in, with just a small window facing into the church, and another facing a high walled small courtyard. The entombment was permanent by choice, but not by Hildegard’s choice. She was bound to her anchoress, Jutta, who was an extreme ascetic, abhorring things of the flesh and who thought that to commune with God, one must deny the body and any of its needs.

She imposed these beliefs on how Hildegard, forcing her, among other atrocities, to wear a hair suit at all times of the day and night, causing her body to be riddled with sores. Ultimately Jutta denied her body so much that she passed away when Hildegard was in her thirties allowing Hildegard to finally pursue her emancipation. Hildegard had remained entombed for thirty years when finally there was some chance to escape the confines of the cell. She did so and ultimately built an abbey where females could thrive and worship the divine in the ways they saw fit. 

From the dark, the brightest of lights emerged

Image: planet-wissen.de

So somehow, from within that darkness, the brightest of lights emerged. Hildegard accomplished more in her life than almost any person of her time had, all of which resulted in the bestowal of sainthood 900 years after her death. She was a mystic, a prophetess, a healer, a philosopher, a theologist, an orator, a leader, a feminist, a playwright, an author, and a composer. She wrote impressive tomes on botany and physiology, philosophy, and theology. She corresponded with Popes and royalty who looked to her for guidance. She revealed the corruption rampant in the church and all the abuses of power she encountered. She created an autonomous community of women in an era where that was unheard of. She was named a doctor of the church, one of only four women ever to be bestowed that honor. And she accomplished all this at a time when females had no voice and with no formal education. How was this possible? 

One clue is that from the time Hildegard was very young she had visions. She was gifted with access to what she called the “living light.” She became a direct conduit between the small dark world she was born into and the Divine. Hildegard described the light this way: "Since my childhood, I always see a light in my soul, but not with the outer eyes, nor through the thoughts of my heart; neither do the five outer senses take part in this vision. The light which I see thus is not spatial, but it is far, far brighter than a cloud which carries the sun. I can measure neither height, nor length, nor breadth in it, and I call it "the reflection of the living Light." And as the sun, the moon, and the stars appear in water, so writings, sermons, virtues, and certain human actions take form for me and gleam.” The light provided magnificent visions to Hildegard, providing her with deep insight into the nature of creation. 

Her direct access to divine inspiration, along with an insatiable appetite for knowledge, resulted in her boundless capacities. It's incredible what can arise from the depths of loneliness, fear, and darkness. There was nothing left to do. There was nowhere to escape from herself. How lucky to have the light within that she could consult. What an incredible inspiration. I could hear her telling us all. We all have that light within. Sometimes we are gestating. Sometimes for very long periods of time. Different seeds require different seasons. For some, it may not even be this lifetime, but it will come. The flowering of understanding. The light of true knowledge that can’t come from anywhere but God or source or the divine or however you may want to refer to it. That “living light” in us all will eventually manifest. 

The Greening Force

Interestingly, Hildegard had an unusual descriptor for that light, calling it a “greening” force. She coined the term “viriditas” the direct translation from Latin being “truth in green”. Of viriditas she exclaimed, “There is a power that has been since all eternity, and that force and potentiality is green!” Carl Jung, who deeply admired Hildegard, called it the benedicta viriditas or “blessed greenness”. He says of the blessed greenness that it is:

“…the state of someone who, in his wanderings among the mazes of his psychic transformation, comes upon a secret happiness which reconciles him to his apparent loneliness. In communing with himself he finds not deadly boredom and melancholy but an inner partner, more than that, a relationship that seems like the happiness of a secret love, or like a hidden springtime when the green seed sprouts from the barren earth, holding of the promise of future harvests. It signifies the secret immanence of the divine spirit of life in all things. (Collected Works, 14: 623). 

For Hildegard “the soul is for the body as the sap is for the tree, and the soul's energies unfold as the tree unfolds its gestalt”. Reading Hildegard’s words has set my own being to green, and caused me to recall a poem I wrote several years ago while sitting in a grove of young trees. It was after I had read about the phenomenon known as sonoluminescence. I learned that bubbles of air can focus acoustic energy enough to produce flashes of light. Sound can transform into light. How amazing. As I sat in the forest I could imagine how the sounds of the rustling leaves were somehow creating green, even though that made no real logical sense. 

A sapling sways silently 

Inviting me into sensing 

Its new leaves lightly touching 

Creating a melody in green 

Sonoluminescent 

Its sound turning to light 

The color of the forest 

Verdant like Vivaldi’s spring 

Setting the color within me to fresh 

To new growth 

Bending and curving in the brilliant sunshine 

Towards its true love 

The color of love is green 

The sapling understands 

Guiding me to bend with it 

Towards a fresh illumined beginning 

The message of all mystics

I felt how Hildegard’s greening is a living force that resides in everything in nature, including us, and that without cultivating that force, we are losing out on the main point of life. For her, this happened to the church. It became dry, it lost its greening power, and she set about to re-enliven it. And it’s happened to most of us. This is the message of all mystics. To know the divine, one must experience it for oneself. Her power was in showing us that that divine living light is within us all, we just need to go within and gain access. 

It’s impossible to capture even the smallest portion of who Hildegard truly was. What she has given to me is the knowing that there is a bounty within each of us, a living force that is green, continually moving us toward growth. She discovered this while enduring extreme hardship and much solitude in her life. Of course, isolation is hard. Most of us distract ourselves in any

way possible because we feel that loneliness is not an option. We’ll do anything to escape that feeling of fear of being only with ourselves. But, Hildegard would implore us, if we find ourselves lost, adrift, in pain, to allow it all in, all the pain. To suffer alone is ok, as it is often the only way to know truth. Take any period of isolation and grief to hold yourself close and gestate until it’s time to flower. Within that closed, small, dark, world you may find that within yourself there is a glorious entity waiting to arise.

We are all seeds of the universe, seeds that hold the universe within their bounds. Most importantly, Hildegard would tell us to give that seed the depth of love and care that it deserves, to bestow all bounty on that seed as it is the culmination of all that has come before it, and there is none other like it. We can all look to her example when we start losing hope, and find that greening power within. And maybe we never need to feel lonely, as the entire universe is within us.