The Journal of Hildegard of Bingen: A Novel [Paperback]

Barbara Lachman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 28, 1995

Hildegard of Bingen is everyone's secret passion these days. Here is a tumultuous year in the life of the great twelfth-century Benedictine abbess, mystic, composer, healer, writer, and advocate of women's full participation in the life of the spirit. Considered a saint in Germany, Hildegard left us three books of her visions in which she often saw the creation as a living, pulsing being, 77 liturgical songs, the first morality play, a book on the healing arts, a catalog of the flora of her native Rhineland, and a wealth of correspondence with monarchs, several popes, and clergy at all levels of society. In conveying the full breadth of Hildegard's inner and outer experience, Barbara Lachman has created a document that rings with truth about this singular woman and her world. Rarely does a literary work succeed as well in letting readers see the world through such illuminated eyes.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This delightful fictional memoir, drawn from the autobiographical, scientific and visionary writings of an outstanding medieval woman, will appeal to a discriminating readership, including historians and those interested in the spiritual life. Hildegard was a 12th-century abbess who composed music and poetry, oversaw the stunning artwork that illustrated her writings, speculated about women's bodies and human fertility, preached in her native Saxony and tangled with popes and magnates in high-handed letters when she disapproved of their actions. The author, long engaged in studying Hildegard, structures her imagined diary around the liturgical feasts of 1152, a busy year for the 54-year-old abbess. With simplicity and adroitness, Lachman entices even the agnostic reader to contemplate Hildegard's spiritual concerns as intrinsic to her character. The woman who emerges in this portrait is warm, sage, alert to nature, responsive to vibrant colors and the stimuli of the seen and unseen worlds. The text charmingly wraps around the footnotes, much as medieval illuminations enfolded passages of a manuscript, giving the pages an artistic rather than an academic look.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Lachman bases this fictitious journal accompanied by lengthy scholarly notes (which appear as sidebars to the text proper) on the life of a medieval mystic. From childhood on, Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) received visions, but she began to record them only at age 43, thereafter producing illuminated books on the spiritual visions as well as poetry, music (she is considered by many to be the foremost female Western composer before the twentieth century), a compendium of healing arts, and a descriptive catalog of flora and fauna. She was also an abbess who ruled with an absolute and patriarchal hand and believed women to be inherently inferior to men. Though she sometimes feared her dreams came from the devil, Hildegard also felt "the dreams could be speaking to me, and through me, to my women, of the need to understand more about the nature of responsibility." Throughout Lachman's imaginative recreation of this remarkable woman, we see Hildegard's astonishing range of capabilities, from her sensitivity for the subtlety of a hymn or the complexities of the pelican to her genuine affection for the women in her charge, as when she is fretting about three in particular whose "monthly bleeding is agony." Whitney Scott --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Harmony/Bell Tower (March 28, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517883902
• ISBN-13: 978-0517883907
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,022,954 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The reality of a saint, November 5, 2003

By 

"brdarius" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Journal of Hildegard of Bingen (Hardcover)

At first blush, this book is a difficult read. The inclusion of commentary by the author had you jumping across the page. After adjusting to this style, you start seeing the real Hildegard. There is much to learn from these writings, the pains, trials and thoughts help to realize the difficulty of Hildegard's path. This seems to be a common message as you look at the lives of all the saints and martyrs of the early church. Nothing worthwhile comes easy. I would reccomend getting this book!