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Hildegard
von Bingen, a splendid example of woman, composer, poetess, philosopher,
and scientist, was born in a castle, in the county of Sponheim, at the end
of the eleventh century, precisely in 1098. Endowed, from her infancy,
with a deep spirituality, Hildegard entered a convent at the age of nine.
When she was still a little child, in fact, she showed a gift for
prophetic mysticism.
Her fame as a saint grew and spread quickly in that linked to the prophecy
that would accompany her visions.
She was applied to for help not only by simple people, but also by the
nobles, prelates, popes, and emperors: to each one she would offer
consolatory, sometimes severe, but always extremely sincere words.
Hildegard had also a deep knowledge of diseases and studied a life model
based on wholesome food and on the use of herbs.
Moderation also underlay Hildegard’s self-mortification and penitence
attitude. Actually, according to Hildegard, health is a combination of the
physical and spiritual levels: it concerns both the body and the soul,
which must keep in a steady, but never rigid, balance.
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Hildegard
considers everything, everyone, and every event to be closely
interconnected and interdependent. In the man’s small world, through the
body and soul, man can experience the intelligence and order of the
universe. Nevertheless, the individual responsibility remains unchanged,
just as each individual is free to choose between good and evil. According
to this unitary view, therefore, health and sickness depend on the balance
not only between body and soul, but also between man as microcosm and the
universe as macrocosm.
Hence, health is regarded by Hildegard also as man’s “salvation”.
Hilldegard’s thought rests entirely on equilibrium and moderation, on the
capability of fully enjoying whatever God makes available to man, but with
no excess.
Among God’s good and beautiful gifts, a major role is played by music.
“The body, in truth,” says Hildegard, “is the soul’s envelope. The soul
has a lively voice, so the body acts rightly if, through the voice, it
praises God by singing with the soul”.
For Hildegard, music is the privileged means that joins man to God, and
singing is one of the highest and most joyful expressions of prayer. While
recreating on earth the lost harmony, music permits to imagine the harmony
of the end of time. Hildegard’s spiritual songs cover all the themes of
her thought, not in the disharmonious form of the language, but ordered
and vivified by music.
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Although she did not have a musical
culture, Hildegard composed a kind of music that combines the Gregorian
chant tradition with intuitions that are ahead of the time when the music
was written and even constitute an early expression of the tonal language.
Hildegard herself affirmed: “I also composed songs and melodies to praise
God and the Saints, although I had not been trained to, and I would sing
them, even if no one had taught me either the staff notation or the
chant”.
The choice of the colours that characterize the images of her visions,
shown by the miniatures, is not a plain repetition of traditional symbols.
Each of them (red and green, in particular) is given by Hildegard a
multiplicity of meanings that are partly traditional and partly new.
Hildegard has left works of a theological, philosophical, naturalistic,
and medical character. Among these, the most significant - “Scivias”,
“Liber vitae meritorum”, and “Liber divinorum operum” - seem to be written
with a style that is typical of “prophetic revelations”. Then we have a
naturalistic work, an autobiography, lyrics with a religious content,
letters, spiritual songs and an example of liturgical drama, “Ordo
virtutum”.
Hildegard von Bingen’s works, music, and visions are still alive so many
centuries after their first appearance and reflect the intact luminous
figure of this “saint in music”.
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