Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 1.djvu/399

Rh French book, full of romantic fact and legend. St. Hildegard (2), Queen of Sweden, + 783. Mas Latrie. Perhaps he means Princess of Suabia and wife of Charlemagne. St. Hildegard (3) or, Sept. 17, 1098 or 1104-1189, one of the most famous Benedictine sainted women, was born at Bockelheim, in the diocese of Mainz. She was the daughter of Hildebert, a nobleman and follower of the Count of Spanheim. In her seventh year she was placed by her parents under the care of the saintly, sister of the Count of Spanheim, in a small community of nuns lately added to the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg, in the principality of Zweibrücken, and under the rule of the abbot. Here she learnt music, and was diligently instructed in the Holy Scriptures and books of devotion; but little attention was bestowed on writing or grammar, for she seems never to have been able to write German, and her Latin was so incorrect that as long as she lived she had to avail herself of the help of some better educated nun or cleric to revise her compositions. This defect in her training gave rise to the statement of her contemporary chroniclers when she became famous, that, although at the time she began to prophesy and explain the Scriptures, she was wholly ignorant of spelling and grammar, and spoke even her native German very incorrectly, yet such was the peculiar grace bestowed upon her by God, that she became suddenly able to understand Latin, in which language the Scriptures, especially the Gospels and Psalms, were in visions expounded to her; and the power of writing, of which she had before been incapable, was bestowed on her in the same miraculous way. She advanced in holiness and virtue from day to day, showing to all a gentle, patient kindness, clothed with humility, and practising the most resolute self-denial in dress and food. On the death of Jutta, in 1136, Hildegard was chosen as her successor. Owing to her reputation for sanctity, the number of the nuns greatly increased, and Hildegard, who wished to have a larger house and greater independence, founded a new convent on the Rupertsberg, near Bingen, containing accommodation for sixty persons; and thither, notwithstanding the opposition of the abbot of Disibodenberg, she removed in 1147 or 1148 with eighteen of the sisters. During her reign there she founded another cloister at Eibingen, near Rudesheim.

St. Hildegard, from her earliest youth, suffered from perpetual ill health, which was increased at times to severe and dangerous illness. Indeed, it is related by the monks, her contemporaries, that whenever she hesitated to make her visions known, or did not immediately carry out the commands she received from Heaven, she was prostrated by an attack of her malady. In her preface to the Life of St Disibod, she mentions, as nothing remarkable, having been confined to her bed for three years. At her best she was seldom able to walk.

She believed herself commanded by God to reveal her visions, but shrank from the scoffing that she would incur by so doing. The consciousness of disobedience preyed upon her mind, and she was finally attacked by a dangerous illness. At length, in her forty-third year, she resolved to obey, and confided her visions and her doubts about revealing them to her confessor, who bade her write down all that she had seen, that he might judge of what spirit it was.

She thus describes her visions, which began in her third year—

"I see a perpetual light in my soul, yet not with my bodily eyes, nor yet with the thoughts of my heart, nor do my five bodily senses take part in this contemplation. Yet my eyes remain open, and my other senses in full strength and activity."

In 1141 she began to write, and, after ten years, completed the account of her visions in a book called Scivias, a word probably meaning Know the Ways, or The Ways of Wisdom. This work, printed in 1513, contains discourses on the way of God and the saints.

In 1148 Pope Eugenius III. held a synod at Treves, whither the rumour of the virtues, miracles, visions, and 2 c