Above: Hildegard’s own artwork of the Trinity

Today – September 17 – is the Feast Day of Hildegard von Bingen: a saint, polymath (a person with significant multiple talents), and Doctor of the Church (Doctors of the Church are saints recognized for having made significant contributions to the Catholic Church).

I have been listening to Hildegard’s music for several years. She lived her life in the region of Germany where my father’s mother’s ancestors later lived and was a Benedictine (I am a parishioner at a St. Benedict parish – another personal reason to like her!).

Hildegard – with her wide-ranging interests, talents, activities, and achievements – is broadly popular across many social strata.

The following summary of Hildegard’s life comes from Wikipedia:

“Hildegard of Bingen… c. 1098 – 17 September 1179)…. was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred mononphony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. She has been considered by scholars to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.”Hildegard of Bingen… c. 1098 – 17 September 1179)…. was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred mononphony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. She has been considered by scholars to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany. Hildegard’s convent elected her as magistra (mother superior) in 1136. She founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. Hildegard wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal works, as well as letters, hymns, and antiphons for the liturgy. She wrote poems, and supervised miniature illuminations in the Rupertsberg manuscript of her first work, Scivias. There are more surviving chants by Hildegard than by any other composer from the entire Middle Ages, and she is one of the few known composers to have written both the music and the words. One of her works, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play. She is noted for the invention of a constructed language known as Lingua Ignota.”

A timeline of her achievements is listed here by worldhistory.org .

If you would like to read up on individual saints, Hildegard’s life story provides many interesting facets to read up on.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages. If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog post, please share it with them (thank you!).