Hildegarde de Bingen [Hardcover]

Regine Pernoud (Author), Paul Duggan (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 9, 1998

A Benedictine cloistered nun visited by visions expressed in the beautiful illuminated manuscripts reproduced in this volume, the founder of a religious community, a musician and composer whose works have been rediscovered in our own time and are now enjoying tremendous popularity, a writer and poet, a naturalist and teacher, and a preacher and adviser to the Pope and his Bishops, Hildegard is essential to our understanding of the twelfth century. At age 43 Hildegard was instructed by a heavenly voice to record the visions that she had experienced since childhood. After ten years of work, her first book, Scivias, appeared to the approbation of Pope Eugene III and wide acclaim, launching Hildegard's career as a preacher and prophet and spurring her to write the encyclopedic studies of medicine, natural science, and the more than 70 musical compositions that are her legacy. Medieval historian Regine Pernoud draws on Hildegard's work and on her correspondence with saints, popes, emperors, and commoners to create a portrait of a woman that Matthew Fox has called, "one of the greatest artists and intellectuals the world has ever seen."

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Music enthusiasts will recognize Hildegard of Bingen as the composer of the many Gregorian-like harmonies that flooded the FM radio airwaves in the early 1990s, but most people do not know about her life as a 12th-century Benedictine cloistered nun, poet, writer of medical treatises, founder of a religious community, and healer who experienced visitations throughout her life. To celebrate the 900th anniversary of her birth, Pernoud (Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses, Scarborough House, 1994) draws heavily on the nun's own correspondence with future saints, popes, and emperors to fashion a vivid portrait of both this remarkable woman and turbulent 12th-century Europe. His excellent work leaves the reader eager to search out more about this important figure. Recommended for all libraries.?Glenn Masuchika, Chaminade Univ. Lib., Honolulu
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Admirers of Hildegard's music will find little about it in this respectful life of the influential abbess who advised princes and plebeians, preached to great effect, and corresponded with Popes, giving one of them what amounted to a dressing down for negligence. The text offers little about music, but provides considerable information on the politics of the turbulent twelfth century, and on Hildegard's visions. She wrote, or dictated, descriptions of what she saw along with explanations of what it meant. These texts are covered at some length, and they are interesting for what appears to have been an almost surrealistic gap between the visionary's highly fantastic, sharply described images and the lucid, humane religious principles she derived from them. There is no trace of modern skepticism in the author's treatment of Hildegard. -- The Atlantic Monthly, Phoebe-Lou Adams

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (June 9, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569247277
• ISBN-13: 978-1569247273
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,344,978 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)