Customer Reviews

Selected Writings: Hildegard of Bingen (Penguin Classics)

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Hildegard, the "Sybil of the Rhine," was a Benedictine nun and one of the most prolific and original women writers of the Middle Ages. Arranged thematically, this new edition of her work brings together selections from her visionary trilogy, her treatise on medicine and the natural world, and her songs and correspondence. Interwoven with beautiful ease, Atherton manages to write with the exactness of an academic but with clearness of a good storyteller. The translations are illuminating and musical in themselves, and a corner-stone for any Hildegard enthusiast.This unique volume includes a chronology of her life and times, bibliography, select discography, explanatory notes, glossary, and connecting commentary. It shows Hildegard as a wide-ranging thinker who touched on many themes that concern us today, including: the relationship between human beings and the natural world, mutuality between men and women, and the importance of a holistic approach to life. Much can be learned!

As a composer, poet and writer on theological, scientific and medical subjects, Hildegard von Bingen has bequeathed us a rich legacy. She is one of the few female medieval composers whose work is generally known and performed today. My favorite interpretation of her music can be found in four tracks on Meredith Monk's album "Monk and the Abbess" Atherton's book provides selected texts from her visionary Scivias trilogy, her medical writings, songs and letters. Interestingly enough, Hildegard is known today in Europe by followers of holistic and herbal medicine on the one hand, and by lovers of classical and medieval music on the other. She is also admired for her life story and for having been a popular and influential author during a misogynist era. Although she was orthodox in belief and criticized the Gnostic Cathars to my dismay I still admire her spirituality and the feminine expression of it (she saw man & woman as equals) and her understanding of humanity's unity with nature and the universe. Atherton provides explanatory introductions to her writings, and the book has a chronology of her colorful life, a discography of her music, notes, and a glossary.

The interest in Hildegard and her visions has never been higher as she reinstated Mary and Eve in the male world of Christianity. To be able to read this brave woman's letters to the pope and Bernard where she critisised them is a real treat.

This is a good overview of Hildegard's work. Hildegard was in fact NOT canonized after her death.