Fiona Maddocks - Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age

Why read a book about Hildegard of Bingen? And why write one? One answer is enough: she was an extraordinarily gifted individual who, for all her apparent remoteness in time and place, illumines our own times and shines a light on the past. We can ask little more of history. This German abbesss power and influence seeped into every crevice of twelfth-century life. That she also happened to be a woman who only found her voice in mid-life merely adds to the richness of her story, though for others with a more directly feminist preoccupation that fact would be of critical importance.

Today she is best known for her music. Yet her compositions form only a small part of her story. She was a polymath: a visionary, a theologian, a preacher; an early scientist and physician; a prodigious letter writer who numbered kings, emperors and popes among her correspondents. She was an artist not only in the musical and literary sense but in painting and, it would seem, architecture. She even invented her own coded language. Her boldness, courage and tenacity made her at once enthralling and haughty, intrepid and irksome. By contrast, the ills and terrors caused by, or perhaps even causing, her spectacular and overwhelming visions often rendered her helpless and torpid.

Fortunately, since the twelfth century witnessed a flowering of scholarship, an extravagant amount of source material exists in the form of Hildegards own writings (still obscure to a general reader though helpful modern editions begin to emerge), her letters and contemporary biographical accounts. To avoid constant explanation of these important but drab sounding documents, I have listed them at the front of the book, together with a glossary of key people and places. Her works are listed with a short description in Appendix I. If only to avoid the Russian novel effect, I urge readers to glance at these at the start.

The task of encompassing her myriad spheres of interest only underlines my own inadequacies. Hundreds of books have already been written about her. With what entitlement does this present study appear? Ideally one should be a specialist in twelfth-century Germany, in medieval Latin and ecclesiastical history, in the history of science and medicine, botany and biology, mineralogy and petralogy, zoology and theology, mysticism, music, painting and monastic architecture.

Not surprisingly, scholars usually prefer to examine aspects of her life or work in depth, particularly her theology, while virtually ignoring the rest. A few, notably Peter Dronke at Cambridge, who first pioneered an interest in Hildegard in the English-speaking world in the 1970s, and more recently Barbara Newman in America and Sabina Flanagan in Australia have dared to pull together all the strands. Their work is warmly recommended. Still, each has his or her own strengths and obsessions.

At the other end of the spectrum, Hildegard has featured in steamy (or, rather, quietly simmering) novels, TV documentaries and anecdotal popular histories. These have their place but leave too many questions unanswered for the enquiring general reader. Moreover, as a quick look at the Internet shows, she has become the darling of crankish cults and New Age zealots, Creationists and Greens, womens movements and alternative doctors.

I have tried to steer a route between the extremes of fashionable enthusiasms and scholarly minutiae and have written instead with the freedom of one who simply enjoyed the quest and wanted to tell the story.