The Ritual Master Merry Advent, friends ! Welcome back to our 12th day of medieval adventures, where we shall meet one of the most surprising women to have lived in the High Middle Ages.
I’m going back to Régine Pernoud for my historic research, but you can find many English biographies of our protagonist of the day.
Hildegard of Bingen was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, medical writer and practitioner. Born in 1098 in a family of lower nobility, the youngest of seven siblings, Hildegard was a sickly child, and was entrusted to the church very early on, because of the mystical visions she had from the age of three.
The religious community tends to focus on her religious work, both as an abbess and as a philosopher who interpreted her visions, as you would at the time, as sent directly by God. In its historical context, that is an interesting subject to cover, yet it wasn’t what drew me to her.
Hildegard of Bingen is among the most important medieval composers. She is the earliest known woman composer in Western classical music, and an important exponent of sacred music during the High Middle Ages. 70 musical compositions, each with its own original poetic text, survive, making this one of the largest repertoires among medieval composers. Hildegard of Bingen believed that music had a powerful, even medical effect on people and she used it as a type of biblical meditation. The effects were noticeable, yet it is only with our modern technology that neuroscientists are discovering the brain’s mechanisms when listening to her compositions. This is, as we know today, a practice found in most religions of the world, left in the sphere of the mystical for centuries, and only recently studied by science, thus freeing sound therapies from the religious grip who made them available only for worshipers. I find her approach to sound absolutely fascinating, not to mention centuries ahead of her time.
There was another subject in which she excelled and for which she represented so much : medical knowledge and natural remedies. Today we think of alternative medicine as coming from an era before the scientific breakthroughs of our modern times. Well, this was it. During the High Middle Ages, knowledge of the body and mostly therapies to help its ailments are starting to become more and more documented. Hildegard catalogues her knowledge into two works : Physica, composed of nine books that describe the scientific and medicinal properties of plants, stones and animals, and Causae et Curae, an exploration of the human body, its connections to the rest of the natural world, and the causes and cures of various diseases. Although she inherited some notions and theories from ancient medicine, Hildegard came up with her own concepts, through a unique method of deduction and divine inspiration. Her books are historically significant because they show areas of medieval medicine that were not well documented since their practitioners, mainly women, rarely wrote in Latin.
Whenever I make myself a herbal tea, I think of her legacy. Here, a blend called Jardin des Simples, the name of the herbal gardens kept by the monasteries in the Middle Ages, with calming properties gathered by raspberry and mulberry leaves, rosemary, lemon balm, fennel seeds, sage, olive leaves and lavender flowers. In a world with so many hi-tech options for treating almost everything, it would be absurd to rely solely on herbalism. And yet, preventative medicine goes hand in hand with science, making Hildegard once again, a visionary in every sense of the word.
For French speaking readers, I recommend this short novel written in a very unusual voice, directly inspired by Hildegard’s life : La Clôture des merveilles, by Lorette Nobécourt. More than a life story, this reads as a manifesto for a sort of radical insubordination which translates into utter and complete freedom. This reads almost as a poem, it’s delicate yet strong, the kind of book you remember less by subject and more by feeling it gave you.
And before I sign off for the day, I must mention that Hildegard’s correspondence, kept in precious archives, holds two letters between herself and Aliénor of Aquitaine. Were you surprised ? HAHA
See you tomorrow !
