Hildegard: Prophet of the Cosmic Christ (The Crossroad Spiritual Legacy Series) [Paperback]

Renate Craine (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Crossroad Spiritual Legacy Series | Publication Date: October 1, 1997

Born to a wealthy family in 1098, tithed to the Church and delivered into the life of an anchorite at age seven, Hildegard was uniquely gifted with visual and auditory experiences of God for perhaps all of her 87 years. But not until a riveting command at the age of 42 did she gradually and reluctantly accept God's invitation to speak, challenge, and console in God's name. The result—a rich legacy of books, music, arts, holistic healing, and theology—is thriving today.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was one of the greatest thinkers and doers of medieval Europe: a visionary and mystic, she composed lyric poetry, songs, and liturgical hymns and also wrote important works on medicine, natural science, and spirituality. To boot, she founded and governed two monasteries for women and toured major cities to preach and to consult with theologians. Craine (spirituality, Seminary of the Immaculate Conception) elucidates Hildegard's spirituality, unique in its time for her understanding of the intimate union of God, humankind, and the natural world. Craine points out that Hildegard's thought is supremely Christian: Christ-centered, Trinitarian, incarnational, churchly, and liturgical. Craine's work will especially interest students of Roman Catholic spirituality. Lachman follows up on her fictional "autobiography," Journal of Hildegard of Bingen (Crown, 1993), with a fictional journal of Hildegard's last year. Lachman is concerned with Hildegard's slow spiritual and physical movement toward her death; the work does not make for conventional historical fiction, lacking plot, forward movement, excitement, and climax, as well as characterization of persons other than Hildegard herself. The reader gradually absorbs Hildegard's deep acceptance and even comfort with her approaching death. Readers of an inward and contemplative bent may well be entranced. Both books are recommended for academic libraries and for public libraries with substantial religion collections.?James F. DeRoche, Alexandria, Va.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: The Crossroad Publishing Company (October 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0824525108
• ISBN-13: 978-0824525101
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,375,133 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new, important window to the vision of a great mystic., February 16, 1999

By 

Robert A. Jonas ([e-mail]) (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hildegard: Prophet of the Cosmic Christ (The Crossroad Spiritual Legacy Series) (Paperback)

Renate Craine's Hildegard is inspiring and really, a work of art in itself. Recognizing that Hildegard's descriptions of her visions and their meaning are both historically and culturally conditioned in the depths of the 12th century, and that reading her texts straight-on can be strange and confusing, Renate's commentary is truly a masterful translation for the modern western ear and idiom. Renate has the rare gift of timeless empathy that seems to easily transcend the centuries, opening up Hildegard's complex symbolic language and making new connections to things that I care about. I am especially grateful for her exposition of one central concept in Hildegard's writings, the Latin word "viriditas" (fecundity or "greening power"). Renate, a wise psychologist and spiritual director, shows how this ever-present divine gift and power of viriditas bridges the deepest levels of our psyche with the whole of creation and the cosmos. Renate explains Hildegard's vision of the cosmic Christ in plain language that suddenly reveals important connections to the Jungian archetypal world, to traditional Christian symbols, and to current, critically important ecological concerns. After reading Renate's book, I can't say enough about the importance of Hildegard's vision of God who is working everything out through Love in an interdependent cosmos, one that, at the limits of our human understanding, is always appearing as healing, celebrating, and revealing itself in the midst of suffering, death, Nature, and the paradoxical, eternal play of Shadow and Light.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Muddying clear waters, July 10, 2006

By 

Joseph (Fort Worth, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hildegard: Prophet of the Cosmic Christ (The Crossroad Spiritual Legacy Series) (Paperback)

"Psycho-babble" exactly! In this book Renate Craine claims to be trying to make the "difficult" writings of Hildegard more clear to the modern reader. The snippets of Hildegard's own writings that we get in this book are like little islands of clarity in the mass of Craine's new age ramblings. I wonder who exactly Craine thinks she's writing for.

I believe that Craine is a sincere Christian and I have gleaned some tidbits of value from her. But this is a frustrating book. I am down to the final 2 chapters and I will grit my teeth and attempt to finish this thing.

And then I will look for something of pure Hildegard on her own to reward myself. She seems to have been an incredible person and an instrument through whom Christ speaks to the world.

5 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Hyperanalysis, of little real world use, November 3, 2002

By 

Timothy P. Scanlon (Hyattsville, MDUSA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hildegard: Prophet of the Cosmic Christ (The Crossroad Spiritual Legacy Series) (Paperback)

I got into Hildegard some time ago through her music of which I have several hours on CD. Then I read of her history. Interesting. Very young into the convent, correspondence with popes, anti-popes, etc. and lived to a ripe old age.

Next, I sometimes read items with which I disagree (as you can see from perusal of the Amazon.com pages.) Indeed, despite my hearty disagreement with some of it, I won't put the book down until I've completed it. After all, maybe in the final chapter, there'll be something I missed.

This however is among the rare books that I could not finish. Everything Hildegard did is hyperanalyzed, in Jungian psychobabble, to the point that I wouldn't recommend to any Hildegard fans that they waste their time with it; if you liked her before you read it, you won't once you've completed it. Then there's the "Cosmic Christ" concept which is a disguise for a New Age fantasyland.

There may be some good books on Hildegard from which you can come to your own conclusions as to the good woman's intents, objectives, and spirituality. This book reaches those conclusions for you, again in pretty vacuous pseudoscience. Read one of the others, not this one.