The life of hildegard von bingen

See Article History Alternative Titles: Hildegard was born of noble parents and was educated at the Benedictine cloister of Disibodenberg by Jutta, an anchorite religious recluse and sister of the count of Spanheim. Hildegard was 15 years old when she began wearing the Benedictine habit and pursuing a religious life. She succeeded Jutta as prioress in

Introduction Perhaps no other medieval composer has captivated the interests of popular audiences, scholars, and the religious faithful as Hildegard of Bingen. She is by far the most famous composer of plainchant, and her 77 liturgical chants and morality play have found a happy place today in the repertoires of both religious congregations and classical and New Age artists alike.

More works can be definitely attributed to Hildegard than any other composer from the Middle Ages. For Hildegard, music rises almost to the level of a sacrament, channeling the perfection of divine grace from the heavenly choirs down to us, where we reflect the symphony in the blessed joy of song.

This overarching story of salvation forms the fundamental theme of many of her musical compositions, told in the symbolic economy of poetry. When the Word of God, by speaking or singing? Each was written for specific days and celebrations in the Church calendar. Other musical forms are the responsory, a series of solo verses alternating with choral responses sung at vigils matins ; hymns, which were sung at various times during the monastic office but never at Mass ; sequences, sung between the Alleluia and Gospel at Mass, in which each strophe has its own common melodic motifs shared between its two versicles; and a Kyrie and an Alleluia-verse.

Thomas Paris, Bibl. The Latin texts, which are rhapsodic and sometimes elliptical, are closely aligned with an ornate musical style that extends the boundaries of contemporary practice.

The principles of Christian rhetoric as set forth by St. Augustine inform the monastic devotional practices for which the music was designed. Hildegard claimed to be uneducated. An uneducated woman had taught me. Women had few rights, and public speech was by and large forbidden to them.

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Though enclosed religious women had more options for literacy, including musical literacy, than their secular counterparts, it was the norm that their writings and compositions would not circulate outside of the community.

As we know, Hildegard was initially fearful of the consequences of revealing and recording her visions and only did so after she received permission from the ecclesiastical authorities. Even then she waited until her reputation as a prophet was secure before she ventured to speak boldly in public and to undertake preaching journeys.

As head of the community, she had a special responsibility to insure the spiritual well-being of the nuns the cura monialiumone she took seriously. As the ars praedicandi art of preaching and the codes of monastic devotion were both fundamental to the religious life and founded in the principles of rhetoric, she would have gained familiarity with their rhetorical underpinnings from daily exposure as St.

For those with acute and eager minds more readily learn eloquence by reading and hearing the eloquent than by following the rules of eloquence.

There is no lack of ecclesiastical literature, including that outside of the canon established in a place of secure authority, which, if read by a capable man, even though he is interested more in what is said than in the eloquence with which it is said, will imbue him with that eloquence while he is studying.

And he will learn eloquence especially if he gains practice by writing, dictating, or speaking what he has learned according to the rule of piety and faith.

Augustine was educated in the classical, Ciceronian-based rhetorical tradition. While he shared the concerns of the early church authorities regarding transactions with pagan culture and literature, including rhetoric, he nevertheless defended its use as a tool for preachers and teachers.

In Book IV of De Doctrina Christiana On Christian Doctrine or On Christian Teachinghe declines to lay out the rules of rhetoric, as they are available elsewhere, and instead addresses the need for effective speaking that is based in virtue and divine inspiration: But if those who hear are to be moved rather than taught, so that they may not be sluggish in putting what they know into practice and so that they may fully accept those things which they acknowledge to be true, there is need for greater powers of speaking.

Here entreaties and reproofs, exhortations and rebukes, and whatever other devices are necessary to move minds must be used. While preaching had as its aim to move the listener toward virtue and a right moral course, its methods relied more heavily on Scriptural authority and personal virtue than on the formal procedures of classical argument.

The ultimate aim of the ars praedicandi was to persuade, but listeners were not to be moved by the logic of the argument so much as they were encouraged to awaken themselves to the activity of the proper spiritual path of which they were already aware in theory.

In this way, the signs and other rhetorical devices employed by the speaker were more properly understood to be merely evocative triggers. Texts were read slowly and mouthed aloud.Discover the visions, the biography, songs and famous quotes of this legendary composer and saint Hildegard of Bingen was a saint, composer and poet.

But it's only recently that her songs, writings and remarkable life and visions have been rediscovered. She was born over years ago and for most.

Scivias is an illustrated work by Hildegard von Bingen, completed in or , describing 26 religious visions she experienced. It is the first of three works that she wrote describing her visions, the others being Liber vitae meritorum and De operatione Dei (also known as Liber divinorum operum).The title comes from the Latin phrase "Sci vias Domini" ("Know the Ways of the Lord").

Sep 24,  · Watch video · The life story of the multi-talented German nun Hildegard von Bingen. The film portrays an original woman - best known as a composer and religious visionary - whose grand claims often run counter to the patriarchal world around her/10().

Hildegard von Bingen was truly a woman ahead of her time. A visionary in every sense of the word, this famed 12th-century Benedictine nun was a Christian mystic, composer, philosopher, playwright 82%. Born at Böckelheim on the Nahe, ; died on the Rupertsberg near Bingen, ; feast 17 September.

The family name is unknown of this great seeress and prophetess, called the Sibyl of the Rhine. The early biographers give the first names of her parents as Hildebert and Mechtildis (or Mathilda.

St. Hildegard, also called Hildegard of Bingen or Hildegard von Bingen, byname Sibyl of the Rhine, (born , Böckelheim, West Franconia [Germany]—died September 17, , Rupertsberg, near Bingen; canonized May 10, ; feast day September 17), German abbess, visionary mystic, and composer.. Hildegard was born of noble parents and was educated at the Benedictine cloister of .