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A saint, an herbalist, a medical genius, a visionary, a brilliant composer of spiritual music, a sex therapist, a scholar, and a leader of the church who corresponded with emperors, queens, and popes. All these achievements for any one person would be formidable. For a woman who lived virtually her entire life as a cloistered nun in the twelfth century, they are almost beyond belief. Hildegard of bingen was born of a noble German family in 1098.
At the age of eight, she was committed to a monastery. Tutored by a
neighboring monk in both classical and contemporary medical texts, she
subsequently produced two major medical treatises of her own. One described the uses of more than 300 medicinal plants; another was a
catalogue of diseases their causes, and their cures. Hildegard's Healing philosophy was decidedly holistic. She wrote that the
structure of the body echoed in miniature the sacred structure of the universe
and that health resulted from being in harmony with that universal order. Her term for health was greenness, which she also described as "the green
life-force of the flesh." She described the circulation of the blood, preached
the virtues of a balanced, low-fat diet, and understood that disease was
contagious-all hundreds of years ahead of her time. Hildegard was also hundreds of years before her time in appreciating the
connection between emotions and health. She understood that anger, for exampled, could give rise to "bile," which in
turn could lead to disease. Recovery from illness required living a life that was in harmony, both with
the natural world and with God's will. Sexuality was very much a part of that natural and divine order, Hildegard
believed, and as a result, she described lovemaking in pious yet explicit
terms. A man's passion, she wrote, is like "a stag thirsting for the fountain,"
while the women resembles" a threshing floor, pounded by his many strokes and
brought to heat when the grains are threshed inside her." Since Hildegard was sworn to a vow of celibacy, it's assumed that her
knowledge of such matters based upon intimate conversations that ahe shared with
married women from the communities surrounding her
monastery. |