"The most extraordinary woman of the medieval world — abbess, visionary, theologian, composer, naturalist, physician and prophet. Her visions, her music and her natural philosophy constitute one of the most remarkable bodies of work produced by any single medieval mind."
Hildegard of Bingen was born in 1098 in Bermersheim vor der Höhe, in the Rhineland, the tenth child of a noble family. At eight she was offered to the Church as a tithe — entrusted to the anchoress Jutta of Sponheim, under whose care she grew up in enclosure at the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg. She received a basic education in the seven liberal arts, learned to read and chant the Psalms in Latin, and at fifteen took religious vows. When Jutta died in 1136, Hildegard was elected her successor as prioress.
From childhood Hildegard had experienced visions — not in dreams or ecstatic states, but in a condition she called the 'living light' (lux vivens) — visions that came to her while she was fully conscious and going about her ordinary activities. For decades she kept these visions to herself, sharing them only with her trusted companion Volmar. In 1141, at the age of 43, she received what she experienced as a divine command to write what she saw and heard. She spent the next ten years dictating her first major visionary work, the Scivias (Know the Ways), with Volmar acting as her secretary and theological advisor.
The Scivias brought Hildegard to widespread attention — Pope Eugenius III read it at the Synod of Trier in 1147-48 and, encouraged by Bernard of Clairvaux, gave his approval to her work. This papal endorsement gave her an unprecedented authority — a woman speaking publicly on theological matters, corresponding with popes, emperors and abbots, and undertaking four preaching tours through the Rhineland at a time when women did not preach.
Hildegard's most distinctive theological concept is viriditas — the greening power of God. Viriditas (from the Latin viridis — green) is the life force that God pours into creation, the divine vitality that animates all living things and that human beings participate in when they are spiritually healthy and properly aligned with God. It is simultaneously theological, ecological and medical.
The opposite of viriditas is ariditas — dryness, the withering of the soul's connection to its divine source. Sin produces ariditas; virtue and proper relationship with God and creation produce viriditas. This framework — understanding spiritual health in terms of moisture and dryness, greening and withering — is not merely metaphorical for Hildegard but a literal description of how divine energy moves through human beings and the natural world.
Her medical works — Physica (Natural History) and Causae et Curae (Causes and Cures) — are grounded in the same framework. Her understanding of health and disease draws on the four humours tradition but is integrated with her theological understanding of viriditas — a healthy person is one in whom the divine greening power flows freely through the body's systems.
Hildegard's extraordinary authority within the Church rested on her claim to divine inspiration — a claim that was accepted by some of the most powerful figures of her time but that placed her in a permanently precarious position. The same claim that gave her authority could always be challenged: who validates the validator? Her willingness to use this authority to intervene in political and ecclesiastical matters sometimes brought her into conflict with those she challenged.
Her medical writings contain elements that reflect the limitations of medieval medicine — her understanding of women's physiology in particular reflects assumptions of her time that are not simply wrong but actively harmful by contemporary standards. Engaging with her medical work requires the same historical contextualisation as engaging with any pre-modern medical tradition.