Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179)

Also known as Sybil of the Rhine, at a time when few women wrote, Hildegard produced major works of theology and visionary writings. When few women were accorded respect, she was consulted by and advised bishops, popes and kings. She used the curative powers of natural objects for healing, and wrote treatises about natural history and the medicinal uses of plants, animals, trees and stones. She is the first composer whose biography is known.

Jutta was born into a wealthy and prominent family, and by all accounts was a young woman of great beauty. She spurned all worldly temptations and decided to dedicate her life to God. Instead of entering a convent, Jutta followed a harsher route and became an anchoress. Anchors of both sexes, though from most accounts they seem to be largely women, led an ascetic life, shut off from the world inside a small room, usually built adjacent to a church so that they could follow the services, with only a small window acting as their link to the rest of humanity.

She received the habit at the age of 15 and for the next 17 years lived a strictly enclosed contemplative life. She received visions which she wrote down on the advice of her confessor. Scivias (short for Scito vias Domini) was the result. When she moved the sisters the monk Volmar continued to serve her as personal secretary and literary editor. The move secured for her and her sisters independence from the jurisdiction of the abbot of St. Disibod.

In her visions Hildegard saw a bright light with dark spots. She heard an inner voice declaring, “I am the living Light who illuminates the darkness.” Her work is a theological work encompassing the whole of salvation history from the Creation to the Second Coming. It deals with creation, redemption and the Church. It is centered on the incarnate Word and his redeeming work.

Her most productive years and happiest were the first ten years as abbess of Rupertsburg. Here she wrote and consolidated monastic life in the new foundation. A great leader, she was austere in her personal lifestyle but loving and considerate towards her subjects. She personally cared for the sick and wrote two books on medicine providing practical remedies based on traditional herbal lore. “The best of all remedies remains the doctor’s compassion and his participation in the suffering,” she wrote.

Her love of learning was combined with the desire for God. A keen observer of natural phenomena, and fascinated by the wonders of creation, she found time to write competently on trees, plants and animals. She was above all concerned for the spiritual welfare of her community, giving priority to theworthy carrying out of the Opus Dei in the liturgy. She loved the psalms and wrote commentaries on them. As a gifted poet and musician she increased the repertoire of the monastic hymnody and antiphons and she composed many liturgical songs. Her songs, in her own words, are ‘writing, seeing, hearing and knowing all in one manner.’

She spent over a period of five years traveling the roads of Germany fulfilling her mission to ‘teach, preach, interpret the scriptures and proclaim the justice of God.’ She spoke to people of all classes and called them to repent and obey the warnings of God. She preached in churches, abbeys, before bishops and princes. She did not hesitate to admonish the clergy for their failure to feed the flock of Christ entrusted to them. She keenly felt the injuries inflicted on the Bride of Christ by self-serving churchmen.


As in her own life-time people of all sorts came to her with their problems and sought her healing and prayers, so in our own day women and men have recourse to this truly remarkable saint and visionary, this ‘trumpet and sound of living life.’ A woman of extraordinary talent, energy and versatility, who placed her God-given gifts at the service of the Church, Hildegard, once know as the ‘Sybil of the Rhine,’ has come into her own again. In her love of people and nature, of poetry and song, of science and Scripture, in her ardent and unrelenting pursuit of the true and the beautiful, her life and teaching have a strong and inspiring message for the people of our time.

The Beguines

The Béguinage (Begijnhof in Dutch) consists of a group of small houses, churches, green spaces, enclosed by walls, where only women were allowed to live. Béguinages were founded in many medieval cities of the Low Countries; the first ones were established in the early 13th century. The Beguines led a religious life but, unlike nuns in a convent, did not have to take vows.

The Beguine movement was a lay women’s religious movement that arose in the early years of the thirteenth century. They lived lives of apostolic poverty and chastity doing works of charity among the poor and the sick (hospitals, leper hospitals, schools). The life they lived was heralded as the most perfect form of Christian life by leading theologians of the time, lives that caused them to develop a spirituality that was both in and of the world.

Those in the early years were predominantly from wealthy families and the education they had enjoyed is reflected in the quality of the texts that they wrote. The texts are significant from the point of view of literary history as they represent some of the earliest examples of vernacular literature, as well as the finest examples of vernacular theology. Their insights into the relationship between the creature and the Creator are a most valuable supplement to those available in other texts. They were for the most part mystical – by means of visions, poetry and prose they explore the deepest, most intimate aspects of the relationship between God and the soul. As women living largely in the world than cloistered from it, they are confronted by the paradox of suffering in a world created by a loving God, and their response to this is both interesting and creative. They used in particular a language of images.

The mysterium tremendum aspect of the Deity is central to the Beguines’ understanding of him, and they use images, metaphor, paradoxes to evoke in their audience something similar in their own experiences of God, and have a sense of awe and even of horror at the enormity of the love that God has towards his creatures. Psalm 22 expresses best the complexes of Beguine spirituality. Within the desperation and suffering of the cry of Jesus on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” is contained the seed of the uncertainty that ‘when he cried unto him he heard.’ The Beguines recognize that it is precisely at that moment of agony of longing love that (wo)man is closest to God - they wonder at the love that is God while trembling in fear and awe at the gulf that separates Creator from creature.
Contributions of the Beguines
These women provide us with an insight into the religious issues of the period as understood and experienced by ordinary men and women, not by the clergy. The development of the Beguine movement was part of the desire to ‘democratize’ religion.

The notion of the worthiness of the priest launched by Pope Gregory VII also implied that being a true Christian depended on your way of life and was an option open to all, outside religious life as well as within it. This proved to be a powerful force among the laity, large numbers of whom sought to live lives approximating the apostolic ideal. Men and women (mostly women) began to take stock of the values underpinning their lives and those of their families. In an age of increasing materialism there was an enthusiasm of some for lives of ascetic poverty. Women decided to do penance for the injustices perpetrated by the desire for acquiring wealth and importance.

Inspired by the desire to follow the apostolic ideal of a life of service among the people, it is not surprising that the spirituality that grew out of the Beguine movement was one that requires the business of everyday life in order to be practised. Because their spirituality was one of active service, those elements of mystic grace which prevented such service were dismissed as juvenile. The important part was to serve in humility.

Drawing on Jesus’ words to his disciples that he who would be greatest should be the servant of all, the Beguines developed a spirituality in which the central paradox was that of rejoicing in union with Christ’s divinity while living in union with his suffering humanity. One of the results of this definition of unio mystica is that the humility of the Beguines who saw themselves as the most despicable creatures of God… was transformed into the courage to stand before God and wrestle with the struggles at the most profound level.

The voices of these women are a valuable supplement to the male voices heard up until then. These voices offer an alternative Christian vision and serve to remind people that true Christianity is not a matter of form and observance but a way of life: A life of service for others out of a love for humankind and for God, a life of low prestige and little public recognition. A life in which suffering is patiently born out of love for God, and is thereby transformed into a positive joy, not merely a martyr’s crown.

The Beguines speak of the awe-inspiring otherness of God, of the love that is too great to comprehend, overwhelming and totally engulfing, fearfully great. Their texts are full of the numinous, the wonder of God, and there is a profound sense of worship in their speaking.

The Beguines may provide some genuine seekers of spiritual truths with new insights into the nature of the relationship between God and his creation. Many are flocking to listen to charismatic leaders. The message of the Beguines is that unusual phenomena such as visions, trances and speaking in tongues are not necessarily indicators of special grace and are certainly not in themselves evidence of a deep spiritual life. As they and their contemporaries were only too aware, these can be the product of (self) illusion. The higher grace is the less dramatic one of union with God in suffering.

Their texts were written for the communities of which the women were members. They praise knightly values such as loyalty, valor in battle, strength and endurance, and loyalty to the beloved regardless of the lies of peasants. They also praise the chivalric role of honorable service to a noble master. But over this they speak of the need to stand up before God, to fight and conquer minne (lady love), to distrust her fickle favors as one would those of a jade at court.

The understanding these women gained of the relationship between God and his creation (woman, man) has something to say to the human condition today as well. Revelation of eternal truths about God takes place not despite the changes of this life, but in and through them.