SANTA ILDEGARDA

St. Hildegard, also called Hildegard of Bingen or Hildegard von Bingen, was born 1098, Böckelheim, (Germany). She died on September 17, 1179, Rupertsberg, near Bingen; canonized May 10, 2012. Feast day September 17.

Benedectin abbess, healer, visionary, mistic, musician, poet, scientist, expert in herbology, cosmology, medicine and biology.

Hildegard von Bingen stands as one of the great figures in the history of women in medicine. She wrote on a wide variety of subjects, more than any other woman of her time. . . . She was a friend and correspondent of popes, emperors, and queens and was renowned and respected for her healing work and her original theories of medicine. Like most medieval medical treatments, Hildegard’s natural healing techniques were rooted in the first principles of scripture. Everything flowed from the belief that man is a unique spiritual and physical being bound by both natural laws and a higher spiritual existence.

““The soul is not in the body; the body is in the soul.”
— SANTA ILDEGARDA
“There is the music of Heaven in all things.”

She believed that not only her visions but also her interpretation of them were from God

Hildegard’s Original Works

THREE VOLUMES OF VISIONARY THEOLOGY

  • Scivias (“Know the ways”)

  • Liber Vitae Meritorum ("Book of Life's Merits" or "Book of the Rewards of Life")

  • Liber Divinorum Operum ("Book of Divine Works")
    In these volumes, the last of which was completed when she was well into her seventies, Hildegard first describes each vision, whose details are often strange and enigmatic, and then interprets their theological contents in the words of the "voice of the Living Light”.

MUSIC

  • Ordo Virtutum (Order of the Virtues): represents the eternal struggle between good and evil in 35 dramatic dialogues and 69 musical compositions.

SCIENTIFIC AND MEDICINAL WRITINGS

  • Physica a practical handbook of healing and monastic medicine
    Physica Includes Hildegard’s 6 Golden Rules of Life:

    1. Draw energy from nature’s life force (Viriditas)

    2. Healthy and balanced nutrition found from food’s healing powers (Subtleties)

    3. Regenerate strained nerves with healthy sleep and dream regulation

    4. Finding the harmonious balance between work and leisure

    5. Detox and purification with regular fasting and sweat bath

    6. Optimism and strength of psychological defenses, using the 35 subconscious virtues

  • Causae et curae o Liber compositae medicinae

In 2012, Hildegard was canonized and named a Doctor of the Church by Pope Benedict XVI. Her liturgical feast is celebrated on September 17.