Hildegard Of Bingen: Healing And The Nature Of The Cosmos

Hildegard of Bingen: Healing and the Nature of the Cosmos

After nearly nine hundred years, Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) is once again a cult figure, with popular CDs and T-shirts celebrating her popularity. Her contemporaries called her "prophetissa teutonica," honoring her philosphical writings and interpretation of the cosmos. Medievalists still consider her one of the leading mystics and the finest example what a woman could achieve in her active as well as spiritual and artistic life in the twelfth century. She was praised for her natural gifts, her prophetic charisma, and her dynamic reforming disposition. The abbess Hildegard von Bingen was the first composer to sign her musical works. As a playwright and author, she witnessed and shaped the time of the Crusades, the literary minnesang, and political and theological debates. The author "translates" Hildegard's ideas and her mysterious world of symbols from medieval Latin into contemporary concepts, and introduces her lesser-known contributions to medicine and natural healing as well as to her comprehensive philosophy of the order of the world and cosmos and the role of humankind in these spheres. Review "Schipperges delineates this remarkable thinker's view of the human being as a microcosm of the universe, intricately bound by the senses to the life of the soul, nature, and God. He does a fine job of concisely portraying the depth and breadth of Hildegard's work, singling out modern medicine and theology as disciplines that have much to learn from her vision and faith." --Library Journal About the Author Heinrich Schipperges, University of Heidelberg, an internationally acclaimed expert on the history of medicine, has written several books on Hildegard von Bingen.