Although some early bibliographic sources state that she was born in 1098 in Böckelheim, near Kreuznach, it seems more likely that she was born in Bermersheim vor der Höhe near Alzey, in the Palatinate, very close to the region known as Rheinhessen. She died in Rupertsberg (or Mount Rupert), near the area of Bingen on the Rhein, the patronymic by which she is known today, on 17 September 1179.

She was of noble birth and the tenth child of Hildebert and Mechtild. They promised her to the service of the Church at the age of eight. She was thus entrusted for her noviciate to the closed Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg, situated on the banks of the Nahe River. She seems to have received an excellent education in this monastery from the then abbess, and sister of Count Meginhard, Jutta of Spanheim.

Her life, as has been told by various authors, is a combination of well documented truth and legend. Various sources state that she took the veil at the age of 15, which means that she would have taken her vows as a nun in the year 1113. Some commentators believe that during these years she led a life of study, peaceful and without incident, until she experienced the first of her visions and revelations. However, there are those who maintain that she had had these visions as a child and they intensified in later years.

Whatever the case, after Jutta’s death in the year 1136, Hildegard succeeded her as superior of the monastery of Disibodenberg. It was seemingly around this time that Hildegard felt the divine command to record her visions in writing. This most probably occurred around the year 1141. She was aided by her beloved secretary and provost, the monk Volmar. This period resulted in the Scivias, or Sciens vias Domini (“He who knows the ways to the Lord”).

The trilogy

Hildegard took no less than ten years, from 1141 to 1151, to write her dogmatic treatise Scivias. This, her first visionary work in prose, coincided with the period of the Second Crusade (1147–1149). Her treatise was initially approved by the Archbishop of Mainz. Sometime afterwards, at the suggestion of the later famous Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, by Pope Eugene III. The work, which consists of 26 revelations, would appear to be the inspiration for Dante’s vision of the Trinity. Its illustrations have been compared to the much later work of William Blake.

For the music lover, one of the most accurate phrases contained in the treatise is perhaps that which advocates a close relationship between text and music: “The soul is symphonic; and just as the word designates the body, the symphony designates the spirit, because celestial harmony proclaims divinity, and the word publishes the humanity of God’s son.”