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Whilst on holiday in the Rhineland, I visited the rumbustious and rabelaisian town of Rüdesheim, with its boisterous and noisy streets and the usual commercial junketing that marks any popular resort. At the station above that bawdy alley the 'Drosselgasse', I took the chairlift to the Niederwald Monument at the hilltop, where proudly stands the statue of Germania - "the spirit of Germany", with a crown held aloft in one hand and the other resting on a sword. This warlike spirit of generous proportions was erected over 100 years ago in an era of imperial and teutonic unification. She symbolises the might and determination of the common people and gazes defiantly across the river to the rather more peaceful town of Bingen where another, and much more remarkable woman, lived more than 800 years ago. The Abbess Hildegard lived between 1098 and 1179 AD. She was a universal genius, a great theologian of the Middle Ages, mastering also the arts, botany and biology, medicine and politics. A theological professor, she is also known to have composed great religious music and produced manuscripts. She is credited with having composed the first German opera, which was in the form of a mystery play. Her treatise on the Causes and Treatment of Diseases was used for hundreds of years afterwards as the seminal work on the subject. In the little town of Eibingen she founded a convent for the Benedictine order where one of the arts the Abbess instructed in was wine growing - a tradition which still carries on, following her advice that "wine is the blood of the earth". Her manuscript written and illuminated between 1163 and 1174, still preserved, called "Welt und Mensch" contains imaginative writing of her ten major visions. This creativity is also reflected in the beautiful plainchant which she composed. She was born in 1098 in the small village of Bemersheim, Rheinhessen and when she was eight entered into a small community of nuns attached to the monastery of Disibodenberg near Bingen. She succeeded as abbess her supervisor, the recluse Jutta, and moved the order to Rupertsberg where her prophesies and visions became famous. She is said to have corresponded with five popes, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and the English King Henry II. Her writing, whether commentaries on the gospels, poetry, medicine, tracts on body and mind and other matters, and her creative talents in this regard have been compared most favourably with those of Dante and William Blake. In 1179, at the age of 81 she died, still in dispute with a pope over the burial of an excommunicated man in the consecrated ground of her convent. St Hildegard is regarded in Germany as one of the most remarkable of the Christian mediaeval mystics. Even as a child she experienced extraordinary visions. These were validated by the Bishop of Manz. Later she wrote down virtually everything she had learned - both factual and philosophical. Useful information on medicine was mingled with lessons learned from the devout lives of the saints. She had visions of devils who disguised themselves as sparkling lights but were later transformed into black coals. All these interests were woven into the rich fabric of her life and we now can discover her incredible legacy. Hildegard was, by her own genius, pre-eminent in all the important fields of endeavour and was so acknowledged then, and still venerated today. There have been attempts to canonise her, and certainly the Rhineland folk refer to her as St. Hildegard, but it is probable that the official processes were conflicting and confused in those times and so the claim is dubious. I notice that her name is to be found in Roman martyrology for the date 17th September (her date of death). Her ornately decorated reliquary can still be seen in the Parish Church at Eibingen. The irregularity of her elevation to sainthood has not prevented universal awareness of her as scholar, mystic, poet, doctor, theologian and indomitable abbess. By her own efforts she was and is recognised as such by reason of her own talents and genius. Not for her the need to rely on legislation or governmental control procedures to ensure that minority groups should be represented in status areas. Not for her the cry of unfairness or inequality which might be redressed by rules. Those who regard themselves as disadvantaged individuals or groups and enjoin the necessity of 'positive discrimination' or the convoluted thinking of commissions on various kinds of inequalities in society, often produce the effects opposite from those intended. For the people who have been specially dredged into key status positions or professions through 'equality' laws can never escape the jibe that they might be there because of a quota or tokenism and not by their own merits. They should take a lesson from Hildegard. It has been widely thought that the painstaking collection of data, empirically derived and its analysis, classification and interpretation, is a relatively new phenomenon. It goes back perhaps two hundred years at most and the only respectable research approach is "The Scientific Method". Moreover we are taught to scoff at the feeble attempts of the Middle Ages in the exploration and interpretation of the real and metaphysical world. Yet in Hildegard we have examples of direct observation (particularly as a naturalist and physician), collection of data, its analysis and interpretation - truly an overlooked Scientific Method over 800 years ago! It is also true that she employed more imaginative approaches, such as the interpretation of dreams (cf Sigmund Freud) and the allegorical nature of visions (cf St John the Divine) -early examples of the 21st century Scenario Writing! In her collection of plainchant, Hildegard describes herself by using a fanciful story, which gave rise to a phrase, startling in its economy of statement but speaking volumes in the imagery which it evokes.. The preamble in the English Translation is: There was once a king seated on his throne. Around him stood great and beautiful columns decorated with ivory, bearing the flags and banners of the king. Then it became pleasing to the king to raise a small feather from the ground. He commanded it to fly and in the moving air it flew daintily along. Thus am I (Hildegard) "...a feather on the breath of God". The whole life of this "Sibyl of the Rhine" was one of intense and passionate creativity, probably unsurpassed anywhere, and seldom even equalled. Rod Dawson |
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page last updated 1 OCTOBER 2000 |
