Hildegard of Bingen, also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a Benedictine German 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 monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. She has been considered by a number of scholars to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.
Therese of Lisieux, religious name Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, was a French Discalced Carmelite who is widely venerated in modern times. She is popularly known in English as the Little Flower of Jesus, or simply the Little Flower, and in French as la petite Thérèse.
In the Middle Ages, the medicine of Western Europe was composed of a mixture of existing ideas from antiquity. In the Early Middle Ages, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, standard medical knowledge was based chiefly upon surviving Greek and Roman texts, preserved in monasteries and elsewhere. Medieval medicine is widely misunderstood, thought of as a uniform attitude composed of placing hopes in the church and God to heal all sicknesses, while sickness itself exists as a product of destiny, sin, and astral influences as physical causes. On the other hand, medieval medicine, especially in the second half of the medieval period, became a formal body of theoretical knowledge and was institutionalized in the universities. Medieval medicine attributed illnesses, and disease, not to sinful behavior, but to natural causes, and sin was connected to illness only in a more general sense of the view that disease manifested in humanity as a result of its fallen state from God. Medieval medicine also recognized that illnesses spread from person to person, that certain lifestyles may cause ill health, and some people have a greater predisposition towards bad health than others.
In Christianity, an oblate is a person who is specifically dedicated to God and to God's service.
A lingua ignota was described by the 12th-century abbess Hildegard of Bingen, who apparently used it for mystical purposes. It consists of vocabulary with no known grammar; the only known text is individual words embedded in Latin. To write it, Hildegard used an alphabet of 23 letters denominated litterae ignotae.
The Wiesbaden Codex, Hs.2 of the Hessische Landesbibliothek, Wiesbaden, is a codex containing the collected works of Hildegard of Bingen. It is a giant codex, weighing 15 kg and 30 by 45 cm in size. It dates from c. 1200, and was started at the end of her life or just after her death, at the instigation of Guibert of Gembloux, her final secretary. The only segment of her work missing from the codex are her medical writings, which may never have existed in a finished format.
Disibodenberg is a monastery ruin near Staudernheim in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It was founded on the eponymous hill near the convergence of the Glan and the Nahe rivers by Saint Disibod. Hildegard of Bingen, who wrote Disibod's biography "Vita Sancti Disibodi", lived in Disibodenberg for 39 years. Today, it lies within the "Nature Protection Area Disibodenberg".
Ordo Virtutum is an allegorical morality play, or sacred music drama, by Hildegard of Bingen, composed around 1151, during the construction and relocation of her Abbey at Rupertsberg. It is the earliest morality play by more than a century, and the only medieval musical drama to survive with an attribution for both text and music.
Simon of the Desert is a 1965 Mexican surrealist film directed by Luis Buñuel and starring Claudio Brook and Silvia Pinal. It is loosely based on the story of the ascetic 5th-century Syrian saint Simeon Stylites, who lived for 39 years on top of a pillar. The screenplay was co-written by Buñuel and his frequent collaborator Julio Alejandro.
Elisabeth of Schönau was a German Benedictine visionary. She was an abbess at the Schönau Abbey in the Duchy of Nassau, and reportedly experienced numerous religious visions, for which she became widely sought after by many powerful men as far away as France and England.
Saint Bertha of Bingen was the mother of Rupert of Bingen. Her biography was written, and subsequently her cult popularized, by Hildegard of Bingen, who lived in the same region, about four hundred years later. Bertha and Rupert share a feast day on 15 May.
Silouan the Athonite also sometimes referred to as Silouan of Athos, Saint Silvanus the Athonite or Staretz Silouan was an Eastern Orthodox monk of Russian origin, born Simeon Ivanovich Antonov who was a poet and monk of the St. Panteleimon Monastery. The life and teachings of Saint Silouan were brought to light by his disciple, Archimandrite Sophrony in his classic book Saint Silouan the Athonite.
Scivias is an illustrated work by Hildegard von Bingen, completed in 1151 or 1152, 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. The title comes from the Latin phrase Sci vias Domini. The book is illustrated by 35 miniature illustrations, more than that are included in her two later books of visions.
This is a discography of Hildegard of Bingen's musical works.
Camilla Battista da Varano OSCl,, from Camerino, Italy, was an Italian princess and a Poor Clare nun and abbess. She is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church.
Countess Jutta von Sponheim was the youngest of four noblewomen who were born into affluent surroundings in what is currently the Rhineland-Palatinate. She was the daughter of Count Stephen of Spanheim.
Vision is a 2009 German film directed by Margarethe von Trotta.
Prelest, also known as spiritual delusion, spiritual deception, or spiritual illusion, is an Eastern Orthodox Christian term referring to a false spiritual state of holiness or a spiritual illness of believing oneself less sinful than one is.
For medieval women, mysticism was "a succession of insights and revelations about God that gradually transformed the recipient" according to historian Elizabeth Petroff of Oxford University in her 1994 book, Body and Soul. The word "mysticism" has its origin in ancient Greece where individuals called the mystae participated in mystery religions. This page focuses on examples primarily relating to Christian expressions of mysticism amongst women, their lives, and their significant contributions to their communities' theology and cultural psyche. The life of a medieval woman mystic was spent seeking unity with God in a series of stages. The mystical life of a medieval woman began with a purge of the spirit in which she released herself from earthly indulgences and attachments. In a state of contrition the medieval woman mystic faced suffering because of her past sins, and the mercy of God was revealed to her through penitence. Mystics sought to imitate the suffering of Christ in order to gain an understanding through experience. During the compassion stage of suffering, the pain experienced by the medieval woman mystic "revealed the believer's love of Christ, fostered unity with Christ and the world, and began to draw the believer beyond the physical Jesus who suffered on the Cross to understand the immensity of the love that motivated Christ in the world to suffer on humanity's behalf". Medieval women mystics experienced visions during what medieval historians refer to as the Illuminative stage of their lives that contained instructions from God and would communicate their revelations in written form.
In the Green is a one-act musical with a book, music, and lyrics by Grace McLean. The show tells the story of medieval composer, mystic, scientist, and Catholic saint Hildegard von Bingen “on her path to sainthood from childhood,” primarily depicting the thirty years she spent locked up in a cell with her mentor, the anchoress Jutta von Sponheim.
