Book Description
Hildegard of Bingen-theologian, mystic, poet, and musician-left an enormous legacy of spiritual insights that have extraordinary relevance in today's world. Even her music hits the top of classical music charts. Why is her influence so enduring?

Hildegard's twelfth-century teachings, founded on the Benedictine Rule, bring with them a wholistic sense that still speaks to today's spiritual seekers. Her ideas on the interdependence of male and female, health and ecology, the arts and sciences, were centuries ahead of their time and assure us that God's "greening" or life-giving power courses through all of life, no matter how bleak the outlook might seem.

This introduction to her life and thought helps to bring Hildegard's rich outlook to bear on today's world. Practical spiritual exercises at the end of each chapter make this suitable for parish study or individual use. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Explores the life and thought of this remarkable woman
Hildegard of Bingen was a twelfth-century Benedictine Christian theologian, mystic, poet, healer, and musician who left an enormous body of writings representing a legacy of spiritual insights that continues to be read today. In The Creative Spirit: Harmonious Living With Hildegard Of Bingen, June Boyce-Tillman presents a superbly written introduction to a woman who was the first female whose writings were approved for publication by the Pope; one of the first women to have her music written down for her contemporaries and posterity; and the first science writer to ever put pen to paper on the subject of childbirth and women's sexuality. The Creative Spirit explores the life and thought of this remarkable woman as well as providing practical spiritual exercises based on Hildegard's ideas and concepts for brining wholeness, wisdom and healing to a busy, fragmented, modern life. Highly recommended. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Catholic Insight, published by Thomson Gale on April 1, 2005. The length of the article is 510 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Year of the Eucharist & Hildegard of Bingen.(Feature Article)
Author: Lise Anglin
Publication: Catholic Insight (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 13Issue: 4Page: 11(1)

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Book Description
After nearly nine hundred years, Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) is once again a cult figure, with popular CDs and T-shirts celebrating her popularity.Her contemporaries called her "prophetissa teutonica," honoring her philosphical writings and interpretation of the cosmos.Medievalists still consider her one of the leading mystics and the finest example what a woman could achieve in her active as well as spiritual and artistic life in the twelfth century.She was praised for her natural gifts, her prophetic charisma, and her dynamic reforming disposition.The abbess Hildegard von Bingen was the first composer to sign her musical works.As a playwright and author, she witnessed and shaped the time of the Crusades, the literary minnesang, and political and theological debates.The author "translates" Hildegard's ideas and her mysterious world of symbols from medieval Latin into contemporary concepts, and introduces her lesser-known contributions to medicine and natural healing as well as to her comprehensive philosophy of the order of the world and cosmos and the role of humankind in these spheres. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent tribute to a glorious dream maker
When Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) established her Benedictine convent at Rupertsberg, she insisted on a charter granting full ownership and independence to the nuns. And on receiving this from Count Bernard of Hildesheim, she proceeded to build the community of her dreams, without deference to any male superior. The prelate and clergy of Mainz might presume to give her orders, but if those orders contradicted her community's values she would not obey.

Schipperges explores Hildegard's values, her accomplishments, and her vision. For her, Christian community was a quest for perfect love, not perfect submission to superiors. The Gospel was a call to fullness, not a negation of life. She encouraged her nuns to deeper self-respect, not the erasure of self-esteem. From her own experience she knew low self-worth as an immaturity to be overcome. For a time she had felt that God was calling her to write books, but believed this was utter presumption for a woman. She recorded that "because of doubt and low opinion of myself and because of diverse sayings of men, I refused for a long time a call to write, not out of stubbornness, but out of humility, until weighed down by a scourge of God, I fell onto a bed of sickness". She might have interpreted this sickness as a kind of punishment for the pride of wishing to write. But finally she decided the sickness came from avoiding a challenge, and proceeded to write the books which many still revere as classics.

Concerning her community's daily life, Schipperges shows their patterns of prayer, work, and worship. They sang their own compositions, shared their visions and set their own rules. In the outside world all of this could be actually illegal. But Hildegard emphasized her women's potential for good to be cultivated, rather than their potential for sin to be suppressed. In her refuge for women, she honored what many rulers and clerics in the "real" world would attack on sight: women trusting their own deepest selves more than any external authority.

Respecting Hildegard's stress on spiritual experience over conformity to rules, her contemporary, Guibert of Gembloux, urged all clerics to learn from her.

Schipperges's book is an excellent account, which does fair justice to a great woman.

--BG, author of "Different Visions of Love" and "The Gardens of Their Dreams"
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Customer Reviews (1)

Useful overview of German mysticism
Andrew Weeks presents an interesting overview of German mysticism, starting with the mystical thought of Meister Eckhart and continuing through to Jacob Boehme and through to Wittgenstein in the modern period.

The most interesting parts of the book deal with Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of Bingen, and Jacob Boehme, who seem to contain the most fascinating mystical ideas mixed with the most powerful conciousness of God's prescence, while in later periods God seems to recede from the cosmos and mysticism occurs in more nature-oriented forms.

This work is worth reading for anyone interested in German mystical thought. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Christianity and Literature, published by Thomson Gale on March 22, 2007. The length of the article is 1850 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Passionate Spirituality: Hildegard of Bingen and Hadewijch of Brabant.(Book review)
Author: Avis Clendenen
Publication: Christianity and Literature (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 56Issue: 3Page: 527(4)

Article Type: Book review

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from Theological Studies, published by Theological Studies, Inc. on March 1, 1996. The length of the article is 1298 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen 1.(Brief Article)
Author: Harvey D. Egan
Publication: Theological Studies (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 1996
Publisher: Theological Studies, Inc.
Volume: v57Issue: n1Page: p184(2)

Article Type: Book Review, Brief Article

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