Blog
Hildegard of Bingen
Monday 26th February 2024
Mike Mullins
"The earth is mother, she is the mother of all that is natural, mother of all that is human. She is the mother of all, for contained in her are the seeds of all."
Hildegard of Bingen
Hildegard of Bingen was born in 1098 in Bermersheim, in the Rhineland, Germany. Her parents offered her as an oblate to the Benedictine convent of Disibodenberg at the age of just eight. Jutta a fellow oblate, of fourteen, took Hildegard under her wing and together as soul mates they cared for the infirm and gardened in the convent. Six year later in 1112 they both took their vows to become nuns. After the death of her friend Jutta, Hildegard at thirty-eight was elected leader, or magistra, by her fellow nuns.
From the early age of three Hildegard's spirituality was inspired by waking visions of what she described as the living light, the "umbra viventis lucis",
"From my early childhood, before my bones, nerves, and veins were fully strengthened, I have always seen this vision in my soul, even to the present time when I am more than seventy years old. In this vision my soul, as God would have it, rises up high into the vault of heaven and into the changing sky and spreads itself out among different peoples."
Hildegard saw everything in the light of God through her five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. She was at first hesitant to share her visions, confiding only to Jutta, herself a mystic, who in turn told the kind monk Volmar, Hildegard's tutor and later secretary. With the support of both Jutta and Volmar, Hildegard grew to be a profound mystic, musician, composer, theologian, playwright, herbalist, and healer. A remarkable medieval female polymath. All the more remarkable for establishing her voice in what was then indisputably a patriarchal society.
She became a spiritual inspiration to thousands of people who journeyed to her monastery, seeking her wisdom and counsel. She made four preaching tours through Germany, speaking to clergy and laity in chapter houses and in public, mainly denouncing clerical corruption and calling for church reform. Her influence extended to abbots, abbesses, kings, emperors, bishops and Pope Eugenius 111, who gave her visions his papal blessing. Her love for the natural world and our place in it, how she saw nature as the first book of God, makes her a particularly relevant voice of faith in today's ecological crisis.
Hildegard had a profound reverence for nature and placed great importance on our relationship with the earth. Her ideas embraced a grand and inclusive vision:
"Every creature is a glittering, glistening mirror of divinity."
She saw the earth as a living organism endowed with the same vital power that animates all life forms. It was a central theme in her life and work.
"The earth sustains humanity. It must not be injured; it must not be destroyed."
Hildegard wrote of the green power of God, forming the compound word "viriditas" from the Latin words for "green" and "truth." Viriditas was the life force of God that animates and coursed through creation, from the very beginning of the universe. For her God's energy was a green fire, an energy overflowing from the relationship of love and kenosis (self - emptying) at the heart of the trinity. Viriditas was God's presence in humanity and creation. It represented the principle of life, growth and fecundity flowing from the life-creating power of God into Earth and life. Grace was green. God is the greening energy of love. The life of God as Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit expresses the heart of viriditas as creative interrelatedness, mutuality and fecundity.
For Hildegard "everything exists to respond to the other' and "to be green was to be more receptive to the Divine Presence in humanity and in creation." Viriditas revealed God as mother, in whose image we are made green. It taps the reservoir of greening power within us, for when we engage it, we are, in turn, changed and find ourselves in love with God and all life. There is a birthing of this greening life and fecundity within the wombs of our souls and it spills out into a deep consciousness of interrelatedness, or what the Buddhist Thich Nat Hanh called interbeing. The idea that there is no demarcation between what appears to be an individual creature and its environment. Harming other than human life and the natural environment is harming oneself. This philosophical position lies at the heart of modern-day deep ecology. The interdependent nature of human and non-human life and the importance of the ecosystems and natural processes.
Our mediaeval ancestors in Europe and indigenous people around the world honoured the earth by calling her mother. The Greeks called her Gaia, the Incas, Pachamama, the Basques, Amalur, the Irish, the goddess Brigid. Even our modern word nature has associations with motherhood, coming from the Latin "natura" meaning birth. For Hildegard humanity has a child, mother relationship with the earth. The earth is fecund, bountiful, nurturing and generous. As any mother would, she cares and provides. Does humanity treat the earth with the love, honour and respect due to a mother? What kind of children exploit and abuse their mother even denying her?
For Hildegard humanity can only find salvation by living in harmony with nature. In the "Liber vitae meritorum", the "Book of the Merits of Life", she states.
"God has arranged all things in such a way that one should take account of the other. The more one learns from the other, where he knows nothing of himself, the more knowledge grows in him. Therefore, through science, he has eyes to watch over himself, so that he does not run into danger and risk himself in it. For if man did not take heed, whom could he command by his commands? Which creature would obey him, and what else in creation would serve him? With the help of nature, man puts into action what is vital for him ".
For Hildegard God was reflected in the rocks, trees, grass and rivers.
"The Word of God regulates the movements of the Sun, the Moon and the stars. The Word of God gives the light which shines from the heavenly bodies. He makes the wind blow, the rivers run and the rain fall. He makes trees burst into blossom, and the crops bring forth the harvest."
(Book of Divine Works, Vision 1 & 2).
Humans were created after the world was made, so the world was not made for humanity but made to be self-sustaining, with humans created to appreciate what had been made. Humankind is made of the same substance "adamah", soil, as the rest of the world, so has the same origins and kinship.
For Hildegard humanity's purpose was to glorify God's creation, to take care of it.
"Human beings cannot live without the rest of nature; they must care for all natural things."
(Physica, 755).
God made creation and "saw that it was good." It was so good, in fact, that she wanted someone to share her joy in admiring and appreciating it. This is why God created humanity and why she endowed humans with reason. Tragically arrogance and the ability to reason made humanity strive to be wiser than God. Humanity has failed to live up to its covenant with God and nature;
"Do not mock anything God has created. All creation is simple, plain and good. And God is present throughout his creation. Why do you ever consider things beneath your notice? God's justice is to be found in every detail of what he has made. The human race alone is capable of injustice. Human beings alone are capable of disobeying God's laws, because they try to be wiser than God."
(Scivias 1.2.29).
In Hildegard's worldview, a beam of sunlight, the fragrance of a flower, the graceful movement of a swan were all participants in the holy chorus of creation. To fail to live in harmony with the beauty and fecundity of nature was to deny the divine force that flows through and gives life to body and soul. She made it clear that we are not separate from nature but an intimate part of it. When she observed the wonder and splendour of nature, she saw the divine which underpinned the earth and the cosmos. "Creation is the song of God," she said.
Hildegard wasn't the first mystic to venerate nature or to describe a mysterious presence that underpins reality. Similar ideas can be found in Taoism, in Hinduism's Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads and in Buddhism. In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says:
"I am the taste of pure water and the radiance of the sun and moon. I am the sweet fragrance in the earth and the radiance of fire; I am the life in every creature."
In one of Hildegard's visions, she expressed a similar idea. By the "voice of the Living Light," which spoke to her of the mystery that animated all creation:
"I am the breeze that nurtures all things green. I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits. I adorn all the earth. I am the rain coming from the dew that causes the grass to laugh with the joy of life."
As with every mystic Hildegard's insights came through her own observations and inner experience of the divine. She sensed the same unifying presence that mystics of all traditions have spoken of and written about.
"The Earth sweats germinating power from its very pores,"
she told her nuns. She encouraged them to pay close attention to nature's rhythms as they hold the key to physical and spiritual well-being. She urged her fellow nuns to be partners with nature saying:
"Humankind is called to co-create, so that we might cultivate the earthly, and thereby create the heavenly."
One of Hildegard's most enduring symbols is a tree, which she used as a metaphor for the growth of the soul.
"The soul is in the body, just like the sap is in the tree. Understanding grows in the soul, just like the greening of branches and the leaves of the tree. Therefore, O person, you who think your understanding is good, understand what you are in your soul."
Hildegard was beatified in 1326 by Pope John XX11 and canonized and made a Doctor of the Church in 2012, by Pope Benedict XV1.
Hildegard's gift to those of faith and none in the 21st century as we face catastrophic ecological disaster is twofold. Seeing the divine life force, viriditas, present and coursing through all nature sanctifying her. Secondly, despite our forgetfulness and arrogance, calling us to remember that, despite our technological and scientific advances, the universe remains a beautiful awe filled mystery and we are the children of mother earth, dependent on her and all other than human life for our very survival. The question is how do we take that spiritual realisation and live it day to day.