The Mysterious Lingua Ignota

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Hello, I'm Dr. Ellan Orianiga, and welcome to Gone Medieval fromrom History Hit a podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history We uncover the greatest mysteries Gobpacking details and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans From Kings to popes too the crusades We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were And how we got here Within the cloistered silence of her comvent Beneath the Rhinand Hills Hildegard of Bingin lived a life of prayer and service To her fellow nuns She seemed a woman Calm authority modest and disciplineed But Hildegard harbored an incendiary secret Since childhood, she had seen things that Others did not that shimmered at the edges of the visible world Voices that spoke. to the ear but directly to the st Her visions came not in dreams, but in full waking awareness Then In the year eleven forty one The divine presence that had hovered for decades descended upon her with irresistible force. Her cell filled with an unearthly fire That was alive with intelligence It showed her cosmic shapes of creation The circling of stars the structure of the heavens The life force of God that ripens and revives all beings She saw the Trinity revealed as three parallel lights Interwoven as flame is with flame And she saw herself as a feather on the breath of God lifted and directed by divine will in that moment of blinding clarity. She heard a voice Vast resident and commanding gave her a personal charge that would define the rest of her life to speak and write. what she saw in her For years, Hildegard had kept her visions private Now The command was explicit and urgent Her fame began to spread. and word reached the highest authorities. Eugenius III was astonished by her visions Treating them as authentic expressions of the Holy Spirit operating through a humble vessel and he encouraged her to continue writing for the glory of God. Hildegard's Cent became a destination for pilgrims and correspondents Kings, popes, and emperors sought her counsel. Yet she never viewed her fame as her own achievement She saw it as the unfolding of the heavenly commommand first uttered within that blazing vision Today I'm joined by Dr. Ha Haouse senior lecturer at City University of London We've spoken before on Gone Medieval in the episode's Medieval writers, Extraordinary Women Chaucer's wife of Bath, buted evvil feminist Both are well worth revisiting But today we're going to get to grips with Hildegard Bingen One of the most discussed figures of the twelfth century both for the sheer range of her activity, and for the unusual authority she wielded as a woman in the medieval church Heta. Welcome back to Gond Medieval. Yay, thank you so much.. I'm so excited. I am so, so excited to have you on today because you are so well placed to discuss one of my favorite people of all time Hildegard of Bingon A Hldea. Held I mean, that's the thing is you just have to sigh because what a phenom. I suppose with Hildeguard, we're going have to begin the beginning. Can you tell me a little bit about her early life, you know We know about her visions that and those started out already when she was a child. Is that correct? Yeah, she had her first vision when she was just three years old, although she also writes about kind of having sort of some experience in the womb as well. So it's very, very early days for her that she sort of has this experience Three is mad. my daughter is coming up to three and I'm like, whoa, that is really little. It' like she can bare barely feed herself and have the visions. But yeah, so right from the start she is destined, if you like, for this particular religious life whichich is lucky for her because her parents decided to give her to the church as what we call a tith which again, bearing in mind how young she was when that happened, she was sort of around eight years old when she was given by her parents to the church. She was a tenth child of a noble family. And if you were the tenth child, it was almost tradition that you would be handed over to some sort of religious institution, just because it's really expensive to be handing out dowries and you know trying to L lots of family members. So that was sort of not uncommon, but what was quite uncommon in Hildegard's case is that she didn't go to a convent, she went to An ankcohold, which is sort of a bricked in cell basically. Not alone. she was with at least two other women, possibly three. But yeah, it seems to be coincidental that she had these visions and then was given to the church. She actually tried very hard to conceal her visions for a really, really long time. L for most of the first half of her life, she didn't tell anyone much that she was having these experiences because she was worried how they would be taken. Obviously there's all kinds of concerns about are these from the deevil? Is she making it up? Is it heresy? So she keeps quiet about it. quite some years, but yeah, it's happening for her from a really young age I find this quite Interesting because I think that there's a tendency to not quite understand how it is that monasteries and nunneries function. And really, members of the lower Nbility are who they are built upon, right? You know that's who gets given as a monk or a nun is spare nooblings, I guess. if that makes sense. Yes. yeah, absolutely. Do you have a spare child give them to the church? And it wasn't, you know, it wasn't considered cruel or they didn't have to have a particular vocation or you know, everyone's religious, but it's not necessarily to do with anything other than just tradition. Yeah. And this being a really powerful institution as well. and this idea that actually for women You know, you get a really good education, you get a little bit more autonomy sometimes. You don't have to get married and have children if that's not your bag. So there were upsides to it. But yeah, it wasn't remotely unusual what happened to Hildegard in that respect. she probably even at such a young age had an idea what was coming. Oh absolutely. And I mean, yeah, when she's sent over at about eight. That is about the time that I expect people to go up as a novice. You know, when you get taken over to the monastery, they usually start pretty young. We definitely know that there are fairly young ladies in nunneries learning and studying and things I suppose you've already hit on it. What is interesting is how she Ends up in this particularly enclosed life And so here she is in D Bodenberg and she's with a fairly famous anchress off the That, right But also I think that this is an important point because I think when we tend to talk about anchor rights, everyone is picturing Julian of Norwich and quite right too We love' so c. But it's not always that there's one person in a tiny little cell. Sometimes, you know, we have kind of like classrooms where people can come and go and things like that and it's more like house arrest and less like Room arrest, I guess is that what's going on here Yeah, and so firstly, I think when we think about Anchorites and June of Norich, we think about someone being alone, which in reality was often never really true for many Anchorites at all. And it certainly doesn't seem to have been true for Hildegard. She definitely lived with Jata von Sponheim, who was like you say, a famous mystic who died around middle age, very extreme in her devotional practice but it also taught Hildegard's you, Latin and taught her it looks like quite a lot of different things. When they were together. It looks like there were probably two other women with them. Whether or not they could come and go, we don't know for sure, but we do know that after Juta died, the women who remained became much more free moving. So whereas before they'd been enclosed and didn't leave the ankerhold, it seems likely they didn't leave. they became novices afterwards and actually set Hildegard set up head of that community and then later on set up her own monastery elsewhere. And I think in early research for a long time research from Hildegard of Bingham, it was thought that she went into the cell when she was eight. But it now seems as if what actually happened is she was with Jutter's family near Diza Bodenbg until she was maybe about fourteen still very young to be wh for us, but actually, you know, in terms of the time period, there's something quite horrifying, I think about the idea of an eight year old going into a cell and perhaps not a hundred percent understanding and the sort of restriction of movement and it being a much more severe form of life. Even if you do have some company and sort of some upsides in terms of education, fourteen is very young but feels a bit more palatable, I think when you're sort of imagining it Yeah, absolutely. And I think also if you have a close look at what she's doing, right? because we have these pieces of information that sayays she's working as the pigmentarus in there and that's quite an interesting role, you know, because that's like, oh, you're doing some herbalous stuff, you're doing some gardening. Yes. You're doing a little bit of work as essentially person who looks after the ill. So she's got this particularly interesting job there and I think we got to see that spill over into her later writings, right? I think in all of her writings, I think one of the things that's most distinctive about Hilde Garda Bingin of all the kind of medieval female mystics or all mystics from that time is just how saturated all of her writings, her letters, sort of medical books, documents of her visions are in the natural world this sense of everything needing to be in harmony and sort of the healing power of the outside world and needing to pay attention. And one wonders if perhaps being enclosed for quite a number of years, I think it was she wasab about thirty eight when she wasn't enclothed anymore and became more of a sort of run of the mill nun r other than Anchress. You know, how much of that is sort of being forced to slow down and pay attention to the outside world and perhaps natural affinity as well. But it is fascinating how alert she is to nature and what nature can offer and how to sort of care for and look after the body with nature but also care for and look after nature itself We could learn a lot from her Oh so much. I will never stop saying it, but Well can we talk a little bit about her early visions? You know you've said already, she's having them from the time she's a toddler, which is absolutely boggar. whats she seeing? You She's keeping them very quiet, but Is this these are ecstatic visions. Can you imagine as a three year old not reporting this to your parents? No. absolutely not. And there's I guess there's a couple of different types of prophecy. So there's a really famous story about her, which is that she's kind of keeping all these things quiet, but she let slip that she knows the markings that there's going to be on this calf that's yet to be born So she sees a pregnant cow and she sort of says, Ohh, I think you know let's slip that she knows what the markings are going to be on the car. So there's this prophecy power that she has, this sort of foretelling But there's also as you say, these sort of ecstatic visions, which are usually accompanied by orbs of very bright light. quuite distinctive in the sense that they're often female figures. so she sees figures sapientia, knowledge, love these sort of beautiful female figures telling her things about s this sort of divine And then when she gets to middle age, she has like the mother of all visions, which she describes as being completely overwhelming. and after that vision She is able to know the scriptures, able she knows sort of songs that she's never learned, she knows languages that she's never learned. She basically gets this sort of like full body injection. divine knowledge, even though she says there's abolutely you know, this isn't human learning. this has all been transmitted through her. So it's almost like she's been in training her whole young life, getting these visions of things and glimpses. and then around middle age it sort of hits her full force and that's when she really becomes quite famous as a mystic and sort of is compelled to reveal what she has seen. I find these visions quite interesting because there's been a bit of debate, you know, there are people who have said, Ohh, is she seeing these lights? Maybe this is actually just a migraine Maybe this is epilepsy. R? And I don't find that particularlyly convincing because you know, I get migraines and I have yet to learn the divine knowledge of the cosmos. I'm only just I'm mostly just out hundredcent. But what do you think about this? I was just thinking exactly the same as he was talking. I also every now and get migraines, I've had them with the flashing lights. I have not produced the body of work that Hold Garder Bingan did. I have not had the prophecies, I have not had You know, and I think you said you said you're not convinced. I think I feel exactly the same. I'm not convinced and I'm also not hugely interested because I think In terms of the way I see my role looking into her as a sort of researcher historically, but also in terms of what she wrote I'm taking her at her word and she for sure felt that they were real. And what she did with the experience, whether it was the migraine, some sort of extreme migraine that gives you visions ofly holy figures or whether it was in fact to her real, you know, it sort of doesn't matter because she did so much with that knowledge for so many different people. She became this sort of counseselor agony annt. She was telling off Pope, she was telling off Frederick Barbarossa himself, you know, she was making real waves in a way that no one had really prior to her. And I find yeah, I mean I think there's a tendency that you're hinting at there as well, which is that oftentimes when you get women in the middle ages who are doing incredible things There's a tendency to try and pathologize them that we don't get with their counterparts. And you know, if the line of thinking is maybe they were migraines but then she also was doing all these incredible things, fine, I can get on board with that. But if it is like, oh, Hilde Germinin was just having some migraines, I'm like, nah, she did she was, you know She had this extraordinary life, She did all these incredible things. The visions feel the way she writes about them really vivid but also kind of lead her to you know do really incredible things, like move all her nuns to a completely new place and build up a whole monastery on her own. you know, the sort of energy that this woman had Which is interesting given how she wass quite sickly. The energy always fascinates me. whenever I feel'm really I'm not very productive when I'm unwell And I always think about Hildegard of Bing and just being so productive through so many bouts of illness because she does talk about suffering a lot and she does talk about Lots of different bouts of illness, some of them related to her vision, some of them not but it doesn't seem to have stopped in the sightest Let talk a little bit about how she gets to this point. I mean so she's having these visions, basically her entire life But how does she kind of move from being, you know, the nice little pigmentarious out in the garden to being the head of this religious community Yeah, it's an astonishing question, really, isn't it? to think So essentially what seems to have happened is from her but one because one thing I should say about Holdiggard actually that I love about her is that she is a first saints that we have where her like official biography includes some autobiographical passages, that was really unusual. Normally people were just writing about you But her sort of official Vita has sections that she herself dictated, probably didn't write, but you know in her own words, and there's sort of a sentence in which Her scribes didn't want to tamper too much or at least a saying they didn't want to tamper too much with her words But her sort of narrative and it's corroborated by others who've written about her is that she sort of had this sort of amazing vision in middle age And in it, God said to her, you have to tell people about these visions now. you know, you've hid them too long But for a while, like a number, you know, she's too frightened to. She does disclose them to a man called Volmer, who was a really good friend of hers like throughout her life. She'd known. It seems like she'd known him. He was a monk at Disabodenbergen They known each other and continued to know each other until he died And she disclosed to him, he believed in her. He started writing down some of her visions for her. She says he changed nothing. Some other men say that he polished her Latin and made it all kind of a bit more grammatically correct. We can believe who we want to believe on that. And then he it sort of then it became a bit of a chain going upwards between sort of increasingly influential men, Volma mentions it to one of his sort of more senior people at the monastery and the word gets quite quickly to Pope Eugenius III, the actual Pope. can't go any higher he hears about Hildegard And he sends for some of her writing. She's not finished her first book yet, but there's extracts of it He sends for them and he's so impressed that he reads them out aloud And he reads them to archbishops and cardinals, or the clergy. There's some reports that Bernard of Clerverver was there at that time and sort of says, yes, this woman is a prophet, this woman is a real deal And from that moment on, she's got the pope sanction and things accelerate quite quickly. She goes from being sort of a local minor celebrity who people have started to hear rumblings of in terms of, oh, was she maybe has some visions and she was anchress, so people have visited her in that capacity too. And she starts to become this absolute powerhouse who speak through what she calls the liivving lightight which is essentially God and uses that to, you know Like I said, chastise popes, chastise emperors basically negotiate her own monastery, which nobody Desa Bodenberg wanted her to leave because she was you know, celebrity and brought in, you know, fame and acclaim and all that So it sort of happens quite rapidly But I love that it happens for her in middle age. I think Again, I find that really comforting sometimes when reading about her. like you know, oftentimes you know, when you're reading about medieval women, everything happens quite young or influential people in that time at all. Hildegard starts getting famous around, you know in her forties and then lives to eighty one No a real inspiration to all of us, I have to say. but can we just talk a little bit about this? You've mentioned it already. But when she is initially an abbbess at Disa Goldenberg, you know, she's still under the thumb of the abbbot there, right? You know Nunneries don't necessarily exist in their own right, particularly at this point in time. They're technically offshoots a lot of the time of other monasteries. and she isn't exactly free to do whatever it is she wants to, right? Exactly. So she isn't even technically, peopleople call her Abess in letters and other things, but she wasn't technically an abess even after she moved. And when before she moved, she was extremely subject and the women in her sort of community were subject to The Abbot And it seems like when she said that she wanted to move, everyone was very astonished. So she says she wants to move to this other location, Rupertssburg, which isn't too far away, but is a distance you know to travel away. And the monks can't understand. the abbbot can't understand. And at first the abbbot says, Absolutely not, you're not leaving because you know We want you to stay here where we can kind of keep an eye on you. And he only eventually agrees to release her after she has this sort of bodily sickness that she says God has sent. and that she won't be able to move or do anything until she's allowed to leave. But in terms of you know this puzzling over why did she want to, it sounds like things have got a bit crowded for the women at Desa Bodenberg. You know She's attracted lots of new women to come and join her. but it seems like that could have been worked out and what's more at stake here is that Hildegard wanted autonomy. She wanted to go and Be in charge of herself and be in charge of her community and do things the way that she wanted to do them. Now she was always pretty orrthodox and there were only a couple of ways in which she sort of turned heads, I think. But even so, it feels to me like there was a sense that she just wanted her and sort of the women under her care to start again somewhere where it could be on their own terms. And there was a lot of wrangling. She did a lot of arguing with Abbott over, for example, the dowries that were given to Dizza Bodenberg when these women joined. Could she take those dowries with her What was her role? how much could she do things autonomously? And there was a lot of back and forth and She describes the monksiz of Benberg gnashing their teeth at her because they were so angry. she wanted to leave and how could she be abandoning them just when she'd got you know, this gift from God and but yeah, I think she wanted to start out on her own and have some more autonomy and leadership somewhere else Can we talk a little bit about the basically the scene that unfolds when she manages to negotiate this because you know you've already hinted at it, but this is one of my favorite stories about her. You know, she's saying, well, that's it, I want to go down the road and Kuno her Abbott says, no, you may not. And so she says, Oh, that's it. I'm sick. I'm unable to get out of bed. And Kuroa stns in there, doesn't he and is eventually forced to relent because he can't move her either Yes, he tries to lift her up physically to be like, get up. What are you doing? And And she and he says well the accounts us tell us that she was as heavy as a stone. And it was at that point that he realized that he had he had to let her go that this was a real physical illness. but it's interesting because There's a really famous historian of Medieval Mystics called Peter Droner who said that Hild Goteringen had the touch of a megalomaniac about her. And I think the reason he says that is because oftentimes these illnesses speaking through God are quite strategic and come at a really opportune moment And who's to say whether, you know, this sness was real or not, but certainly it must have looked to this Abbott Kuno like She's just doing it because she wants to move and I'm not going to let her move But then, you know he goes into her room and sort of sees that actually this seems to be legitimate. And there's also another story about a monk who speaks up against them leaving. he's very vocal about it and he's struck down with this horrible illness, his tongue swells up. he like he's like near death and he only is freed from the sickness when he sort of speaking out against Hildegard leaving. and we're told that he goes to Ruperttsburg himself and starts moving like vines out the way to start building this site because he's realized the error of his way. So yeah, there's a lot of this sort of sense in which you're like, oh okay, at just the right time, this illness. And we're told that I love this little detail. We're told that as soon as he agreed and relented and said she could move her with her sister, she leaps out of bed as lightly as if she had never been immobile at all I love it because it it just strikes me of, you know like a child having a temper toom or something And it worked because you know, if you've got I mean, this is a thing that she got away with that later mystics would never have done. She came at just the right time really. Women later, there was a lot more forbidding climate in terms of sort of looking for heretics and all of that. But she gets away with a lot because she has the Pope' sanction. He's said that she's a prophet So if she says, I'm having this vision from Gods and you need to do this or God is telling you this is what you need to do.'s The highest sort of church authority on side and everyone is a bit helpless in the face of that. So on the one hand, in real term, she's got knock Very much power at Dza Boldenberg. She's under the thumb of the abbbot She's not even an abbbess. Then she also has this other kind of power that is so much higher than everyone there. that it sort of creates this real tension between the men who are used to being in charge and now this new sort of upstart woman that has the highest religious authority in sort of in the Christian kingdom on her side As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Bwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors, and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history Kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines, and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to but twwixt the sheets the history of sex scandal in society twice a week every week wherever it is that you get your podcasts, brought to you by the award winning network, History Hit I just love this for her. you know, Who amongst those hasn't wanted to simply throw a tantrum in the face of our boss at a point in time? Oh my God, yes. This is such great stuff. But she doesn't, you know, as you say, she not only gets the go ahead to create her own inunerate Ruperensburg She does it, you know, they move her down the road. Here we go. What is this new nunnery like? Like what are the characteristics going on there? What are the women involved in doing So when they first arrive, it's terrible. It's a catastrophe because there's nothing there. There's like a couple of old farmhouses and nowhere for anyone to stay. And what is quite characteristic of the sisters of Hildegard, and she gets attacked for this by at least one other abbess is that everyone's from quite noble stock All of the women in her community tend to be pretty well to do. and all of a sudden these women who've had a pretty comfortable life at Da Bodenberg find themselves in this sort of dilapidated farmhouse type landscape where there's no real place to stay and everything needs to be built from the ground up And this is where we sort of see Hildegar's tremendous energy, but also her skill in so many different directions. You know, we've already said, you know, she's got a real talent for gardening, she has these visions, she's very attuned with nature, she composes beautiful music. It also turns out she can like oversee construction. because she pretty much single handedly according to the reports anyway. and of course people and she's not doing the physical building But she's making sure it all happen. She's bringing in money by allowing sort of nearby noble families to bury the dead in the graveyard at the new monastery. She's, you know, coming up with the plans and how it should all look and One monk Gibert of Gemblau who writes an unfinished better of her and lived with her for a couple of years at Ruper'sburg Wax is lyrical about how wonderful by the end of her life, this monastery is that it has, you know it's got you lovely garden, it's got like a medical center, it's got kind of the library, it's got all the things that you could possibly want. All these wonderful women are there. Everyone's living in harmony. But there are some mixed reports. He calls it a sort of paradise of delights, but there were some other commentators, particularly when it was being constructed who referred to it as like a military training camp prison Because it was, you know, all these women are used to this very comfortable way of life and all of a sudden, Hildegard, possibly just in the pursuit of sort of independence and autonomy It is like, rightight ladies, off we go. Let's build a new one. and it must have been a real shock and she did lose some did leave her at that point and she talks about how and challenging that was to sort of try and keep everyone's spirits up whilst they're building this new monastery. But it's so successful in the end that she has to build another one. They get one down the road like just across the river, Evnddon, which is where her body, parts of her relics still are today So it was a success story, but it was it was a challenge, you know, she wasn't sort of arriving at this nice pre made monastery She was she was taking on a real work of labor and, you know, everyone looking up to her and, you know, can you make this work But it probably she probably had some experience with this because it looks like Dizza Bodenberg was pretty dilapidated when she joined, but because Jut her, the mystic that she was kind of enclosed with, was from such a wealthy family, her dowry basically paid for Dizza Bodenbg to be reconstructed and done up and she would have witnessed much of that building work happen I mean, to be fair, she does it, right? Like Ruperttsburg becomes this this nice nunnery And they get down to some pretty serious theological work or at least Hildegard does. I mean at this point in time, we really have this flowering of her output. Can you tell us a little bit about her theology looks like. You know it's very heavily visionary, but what sorts of things is she writing about Well she writes a lot of different texts in a lot of different genres. So she's got her first book which she writes largely before the move is Skivyas, Know The Ways, which is sort of an account of all her visions. But then she also has two medical books that she writes that have of course, a theological edge to them. She writes the first no morality play about the progression of a soul She writes you hundreds of letters on theological subjects. So we have this sort of huge body of work, but there's a few distinguishing features One, I think we've sort of already touched on already, this idea that that Natural world is really important to the spiritual world and you're sort of trying to work with nature to find the spiritual harmony And she talks about this thing called variditas or sometimes translated as sort of greenness or freshness, this sort of green energy is God, but also is nature. And it's sort of the harmony of the cosmos and sort of this sort of sense of how everything fits together cosmologically like the human the human body and how that works. human's relationship with animals you know, the relationship between the forest and God, all of these things are sort of coming together in sort of perfect harmony. And it's all very much coming back to this idea of the natural world and natural energy. But there's also a real sort of feminine edge to it. So Barbara Neewman is probably the most famous sort of historian to have worked on Hildegard a begin and she has done a number of different writings on just how sort of interested in the feminine Hildegarda Biggin is in these works. So a lot of the figures that she sees in her visions are female figures and sort of a real emphasis on nurture. on moderation on mercy You know, we're not seeing any of the Old Testament stuff with Hildegard. She can be firm And she certainly takes people to task when she needs to, but there's a real sort of compassion and sort of sense of being attuned to the world around her and how that all comes together that is springing out of Complete Othodoxy, you know a lot of sort of contemporary and then later writers are in a similar vein, but I think the things that make herers really distinctive is this sort of emphasis on greenness and vid tasks And they the sort of feminists, not feminist she's not a feminist, but feminine Edge to theology. Yeah. gotta be careful with that word, of' you. Yeah, I mean, one hundred percent, absolutely not. No, we love and respect Hildegard in this house, obviously. but I'm not going go and call her a feminist or anything But I do think it is true that it's interesting she has this real way of centering femininity that men simply do not at the time. you know, For example, since I do a lot of work on sexuality, I really think she's interesting because she's one of the only people who actually says, well, I don't think that women are Voracious sexual harpies actually Yes. and which is a really big deal at the time Yeah, and shes and she says I was rereading something this morning. I was like, she's so good, isn't she? Like she basically has a whole passage and I think it's one of the medical texts. She writes a lot on gynecology, which was really unusual. problean two at the time, but you know, that Men should sort of leave women alone when they're on their periods because they're actually suffering enough. That's right. And like give them a break. And I was like, creeach sister. she is yeah, she doesn't see, she says women are much more able to restrain themselves than men in the way she writes about sex, men come off much more as a sort of insatiable sort of off kilter. and as you say traditionally, in writings at this time about women's sexuality, it's this idea that they're you know, almost vampyiric in their desire and that they can't stop themselves and the tempresses and you don't see any of this She sometimes will do the sort of humility tops about being a woman. you know, I'm just a weak and feeble woman writing to you in the mouthpiece of God. but there isn't really anything in her actual writings that suggests that she buys into a lot of the misogynist rhetoric, and she doesn't directly challenge it, she just doesn't really acknowledge it. and she has kind of much more positive readings. And that's not to say, you know, in terms of the sexuality stuff, she's extremely dammning on like masturbation and homosexuality as one probably would expect at the time. But we do get these glimpses of a much more aggressive way of thinking about sex. and honestly just the fact that she seems to know quite a bit about it is astonishing Given her life. It's absolutely true. She's, you know, gone to be a recluse at, you know, fourteen. She's lived in an ankhold and then in a convent until, you know she starts writing. And she seems to have a pretty good working knowledge of all. But then of course, pilgrims will be coming chatting to her all the time. and I think my husband's cheating on me or I accidentally went to this brothel and I shouldn have done. So maybe that's where she got it Also she writes a lot of music and plays, which I think is a really interesting thing about her because she's a real polymath, right? Like what kind of things is she writing about when she's writing down music? Interestingly, a lot of the sort of music seems to be tied into this idea of sort of greenness and branches growing and sort of love and charity and community She tells us that she didn't really have any learning in music and that it's sort of all been given to her by visions. But I was just listening to some this morning and it is the most beautiful stuff, the music that she wrote is it does feel very heavenly. And it's also lovely to hear music at this time for sort of female voices as well because I think ofentimes the really famous ones are sort of for monks, but she's writing, sometimes for the monks but also for her community. But there seems to be Yes, she wrote so much in so many different genres, but there seems to be this connecting thread of ping going Perseverance, emphasis on little details, like the branch that grows and flourishes and how to tend to it In a lot of the letters that she writes, she's always telling people not to give up. and I think her music feels very hopeful and optimistic and has that message in it too. you know, keepeep going, donon't give up and this is what you will get. if you kind of persevere But again, lots of natural imagery, lots of very beautiful imagery of nature, which seems to connect all of her writings that eye can see. And I find this incredibly innovative Right Because you know, yeah, I'm used to seeing alls of religious music from Middle agges. I swear there's nothing in between. It's either Kights and ladies, something think about a dragon., jokes about farts and penises or Godd. L those are the three ways of talking about things. And I'm not saying that Hildegard isn't writing religious music, but it does really have a differing quality and certainly also if you hear it and people still perform Milde Gard's music all the time. Yeah. and it's probably the best known for, I think nowadays. I think most people have' said to them, like have you heard of Hilde Garding and would have heard of her for her music more so than, you know, her medical writings or even perhaps her visions It's the music that kind of when it was sort of rediscovered and sort of sort of being played a lot more, I think in like the nineties, that was when she became much more of a household name, I think. And I wonder if more so than other medieval music that survives, it has that more relatability, perhaps because like you say, there'ss sometimes a real earthiness to it or a real humanity to it that sometimes feels missing in the more austere music of the time Does it actually get beyond the walls of the Nunnery at the time, or is this just something that the nuns are doing for themselves? It seems like the music was known about, but didn't have the legacy that you would hope for it. muchuch like all of her writings actually. L she has she has a cult. And she you know, as soon as she dies, everyone sort of hustles to try and get her canonization documents ready. but she isn't actually canonized. She's known in England as a prophetess, but not really as a musician And I think that's true of most other places in Europe. So there's a sense of people know about her or they know that she is ricing all these different things It seems to be something that remains for the most part, within, as you say, the sort of convent walls. somethingomething that really devastates her towards the end of her life is she gets in hot water with church authorities. overver a complete misunderstanding, you wonder if they had a bit of a they were sort of doing it out of spite if they had a bit of an issue with her because basically her and the nuns bury this nobleman and to their knowledge doing the wrong. And then she's accused of burying someone who sort of died excommunicated, which is a sin and they say she needs to dig up the body. And she refuses. Because she says, No, I know that this man died penitent. I know that he died. absolved, he wasn't excommunicated. He'd been reconciled to the church. I've not done anything wrong. I'm not digging up the body of like a Christian saved soul. And they say, okay, if you don't dig it up, we're going to put an interdict on your whole convent so that they're not allowed to take sacraments or sing the Divine Office Whoa. huge like and that's not just her, that's all the nuns too. And she writes this beautiful letter pleading pleading with the church authorities to take this interict off the monastery and she's sort of saying that you know music is how we talk to God And to be for that to be taken away is the cruelest punishment. And actually even more than not being able to take the sacraments, it seems that it's singing the divine Oice that is being able to sing the Divine Officer is most painful to her Yeah I that's so interesting and moving, right? Be it shows you how different people can have these really complex relationships with the sacral with varying church offices because you know, I think that we tend to see, especially in the later medieval period more of an emphasis on that disconnection from the Eucharist. So to see her really feel connected to the music is that's remarkable, I think Yeah, and I think, you know, thank God, she never got really seriously accused of heresy. There are other later mystics that get in much more hot water than hers. She worries about it, but for the most part because she's had the sanction from the pope, she's okay. But yeah there's such a growing obsession with the sacraments that starts off around the time she's alive and then gets worse and worse and this sort of increasing sense of that Sacraments are the domain of men and priests and sort of female mystics rubbing up against that in the wrong way. And she never does that. She' like I said, she's very orrthodox, but That's the only bit where I was, you know, when you're reading her letters or her writing where you're like, oh yeah, to be so much more focused on the music than the sacraments is really feels interesting at this time Not enough to get her in any trouble, but certainly surprising As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Bwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors, and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history Kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between. We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodysiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits. In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to but twwix the sheets of the history of sex scandal in society twice a week every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts, brought to you by the award winning network History Hit I also talk a little bit about Lingua Igignota because I think he's such an interesting thing. because she inventss this her whole own language and alphabet. What's the deal here? Yeah, I mean, who knows honestly is the answer. I've wrote down how many words it was. I think it's a thousand Wow. Yeah, Lingua Ignota, a glossary of a thousand words in the language that she made up, most of which seemed to be related to like nature or the body. So like perhaps for something to do with the medical text. No one has any idea why she made up this glossary, this own language or what she used it for I have No idea. I was wondering, I was thinking about her a few weeks ago and I was like, was she just really, you know, looking for stimulation? like in the way people like place Sdoku or whatever, Was she just like I just her brain was so massive. L look at all the works that she's done all the different kind of genres that she had command of and knowledge she had command of. and maybe she was just literally doing it full fun Um, Or maybe there was something about wanting to do it for the madical texts Is it some kind of, you know I don't know, could it be like a secret coding that she's like worried about the books being, you know, at a time when people did worry about what they were writing and sort of, you know getting on the wrong side of church law, couldould it be something to do with that I have no idea, but it blows my mind. you know, all these very serious endeavourors that she's doing and then she's also like making up her own language is the kind of thing like people do when they're quite you know, young, isn't it? But it was very serious and you know, it's like I said, it's a big text and, you know, she commanded it to Vllum which expxensive you know Yeah ye. Isn't it cheap yeah So yeah, I mean your guess is as good as mine. I have no idea why she did it, but it's fascinating. It's just yes another thing' like, oh my goodness, I'd love to meet you. I have I have so many adjectives in my head that I think would describe her, but I think if I met her, I would just I can't visualize what should be like because the work is so massive. then accounts of her are so many, you know, who was this woman that was, you know writing about sex in such a candid way novice and then making up her own playful language. I don't know. Well ye and then plus But O on top of all of this, she's also got this really extensive knowledge of medical corpus, right? You know, now she's really kind of revered as one of the premier what we call natural philosophers. Yeah and the middle A ages And again, for her to be doing that as a woman, astonishing. The only other woman that we have like recorded the name of who was doing medical writing during this period is Tota of Salerno, who is sort of pinnacle of medical writing. but her medical writing is extremely well respected if you kind of look at it alongside contemporary medical accounts that were kind of being used all the time. She seems to have had a really excellent looking knowledge. sureurely she must have worked in the infirmary for some point in her life as a nun. Perhaps anst. Perhaps even as anchst because I don't understand. I mean, she was clearly very well read. so some of it, you know, she might have got her hands on some text, but there's innovation in there too, writing on gynecology And there's a lovely quote by there's a guy called Johannes Trithemius who is a Renaissance writer who was really interested in medical text and he says In the medical book, she records with a subtle exposition the many wonders and secrets of nature in such a mystical sense that only from the Holy Spirit could a woman know such things? Now, of course there's a slide digger women at the end. course Of course there is. This is the Middle Ages. But this sense in which you know this sort of well respected Renaissance medical writer is like, yeah, this is exactly what we would expect to see The knowledge is there. She seems to have a really good working sense of how to heal people. And of course there are healing miracles associated with Hildegard, you know you know she many recorded in her canonization documents, but it seems that she did also heal people perhaps from certainly seems like from these texts. with sort of herbals as well. its it's Again, much like with the sex thing, I'm like, whereere did you get all this knowledge? Was it just extensive reading and then working in the infirmary? But other people were working in the infirmary not writing these incredible texts. so Right? That's the thing. it's not as though there aren't plenty of women who are doing some medical work, but they're not necessarily growing the corpus of medical information in the same way. No. I mean it is, like I said, that it is a really distinctive body of work, two extremely robust texts written by woman at this time You know, almost, you know, how where does she where does she come from? It's incredible I find this such an interesting legacy too because now I think that there is a tendency to see her as kind of This precursor to what we're seeing now in terms of emphasis on herbal remedies and healings and this sort of alternative medicine that goes on now. What do you think about that as a tendency? Yeah, I'm not in love with it because again, I feel like it's a bit like what we talked about with the migraines L h Yes, maybe she'd have my friends, but It feels like sometimes with this kind of writing there's a bit of a downplaying tendency. Now that's not to say that alternative medicine should be thought of as any less prospected than actual medicine. And I think someone who was a real enthusiast about alternative medicine and celebrated her that would feel different. But I think sometimes when it's coming from a sense of like Oh, there's real medicine over here and then there's these women doing some herbal medicine over here. Actually, you know, at the time Hilde Garter Bigam was writing women were still clinging on just to medicine and being in charge of that over the years, it became more and more the sort of gatekeeping of men. But yes, there are herbal remedies in there because that was you know what was available to most people for healing in the Middle agges. You know, I sort of feel like if she'd been alive now, she would have been doing some really innovative stuff with like, you know, cutting edge neuroscience or something. I don't know. she It feels like a little bit of a downpling tendency to me. However you know, one of the things that's lovely about her as a figure is she has so much to offer. So I think if it's done in good faith kind of thinking if you know, if she becomes an idol for you because you're really invested in that kind of medicine and you see her as really attuned with nature and doing some really progressive things in terms of being an environmentalist as well in some sense is great. But yeah where it feels like slight dengrration, I'm uncomfortable with it agree with you on this because I think it's important for us to point out that at this point in time, herbal medicine is just called medicine. Right? Like thats just that's just medicine, right? And exactly that's what was available and also probably what worked the best at the time, really. Yeah becausecause all of the really classical leared medicine, you know that we're seeing pass down from, for example, the ancient Greeks and Romans, doesn't actually work because humors are not real But and exactly. But if that is the, you know, your guiding principle And you know, and was for ages. you know for years after Hilde Gara Bingam was writing, people were subscribing to the theories of God and the humors. and you can see that what she does with it is really creative. So yeah, I agree. think We forget sometimes that the state of player medicine was very different when women like Iildaotabing were alive. and actually it's extremely remarkable that she had that breadth of knowledge that she did from you know, whether she was getting it from other books, but it seems like that it's not clear what her sources were. There's no direct source for all of it. Right? Yeah. Yeah, which is so interesting to me. Like look, I think that she is quite interesting because we've already hinted at this a lot. She's doing all these incredible things. She's making up languages in her spare time. She is working in the garden, she's writing about herbs. She's composing music. She is also just telling everyone about her visions. and then she's also Telling off the pope, telling off the emperor. This is the sort of stuff that would ordinarily get you in so much trouble just as a religious person generally, let alone as a woman These letters are actually received in fairly goodwill, right You don't get any sort of anger replies that she has such a position of authority. and again, I think this is very much of her time. she'd been born a hundred years later, wouldn't it work? But she's sort of on the cusp of the change And oftentimes these men in writings are quite chastened You know, and please give me more advice, you know, they are looking to her. as a councselor as someone who has divine authority And they might not necessarily like what she's saying, but they they don't they don't clap back. You know, often the replies are you know, thank you so much and u you know, I will take her advice and I'll think on it. And these are, you know, not just the pope but also like the emperor. She wrote she wrote to the King of England. She wrote I mean, there is no one that Hildegard thinks is, you know, out of reach for her. And that alone is astonishing for anyone like you say, let alone a woman to be She doesn't mince her words, you know, she's not couching all of this. Catherine of Sienna, who is a later mystic when she's writing to poes, she does a lot of couching. I think that, you know, you know, we all probably do know jobs Hilde Varin doesn't do any couching. She's like The liiving light says you are being unworthy. She calls what is it? She calls Frederick Barbaro' a juvenile fool see Frederick Barbarossa and not long after she tells him that it's all going to go to hell in a handbket. If he doesn't listen to her, he does die And this happens a couple of times when she says to, you know she does it to I think it's one of the Abbitss, it's it Adel But she one of them she says, you know, if you don't get yourself together, you will be cut off from Grace and he a few months later is murdered Whether she just was very good at figuring out the situations and understanding political situations and could see where things were headed, I think is more likely than actually prophesying anything But yeah, she's And she bless her, she gets completely plagued by letters. You know, O of the things that I think really humanizes her is reading all the snippy letters she gets from people who are annoying she's not written back yet And's like, No, this does not find me well. Yeah, they're like they're like, you know, you get all these kinds of various different people, monks, abbbesses, you know, noble people saying, Oh, did you I wonder if you didn't get my last letter because I haven't had a reply from yet. or I'm so surprised not to have had a reply from you, given you're such a holy woman. I thought you would have made the time. I hope you don't think it's because I am because that would be awful of you to think that. you know, all these kind of different approaches. And she's, you know, extremely busy, sick most of the time, getting older. and a lot of the time is sort of know having to apologize for not writing back in a more timely fashion. But she seemed to receive such an astonishing amount of letters A really funny example of this is when Gibbert of Gemblo, who I mentioned earlier, he lives with her in the last two years of her life and some nearby monks use them as a bit of a go between. And they write thirty eight really difficult theological questions and want her to answer them at length And then send like multiple letters, like why have you not replied to us? And it's like, give her a break. Oh thirty eight questions and like On like the biggest theological questions and you're like, she's got stuff going on. She's busy. And she's tired and sick. Leave her alone And this is the thing, as you say, she's keeping up these correspondence as well into old age. and she lives Quite some time now. eighty one eighty one, That is mad. Good innings. Really goodnings. Goodnings. I think a lot of it is because she was very moderate. So a lot of you know, Jutter who she lived with the mystic that she was sort of enclosed with was extremely aesthetic you know, she's, you know, fasting, not eating anything. we' like a chain with like literal like nails in it under her hairhirt, you know, she dies at like for four, I think. Hildegard, who preaches moderation to everyone, keeps going to eighty one. She's going on a preaching tour in her seventies crazy. crazy. And I mean, the fact that she's even allowed to preach is this is the thing with Fildegard. There are so many things we' like, oh my God, you know, women were not allowed to preach. This is not your thing. She's pretty much the only one who was given sanction it's unheard of, you know, at that time for a woman tos be to do that. And then she's sort of wandering around in her seventies, you know, preaching to people, you know, telling them to do better trying to get the church in ship shape because she feels like it's really sinking into corruption just such energy. I mean, and this is the thing too. she's still having visions right up until the end as well, isn't she Yes, and even after she dies, it's you know, apparently you know rainbows of light appeared. And she is up until the end writing to people as the living light, you know, getting these messages from God he, you know, helps her through this whole kind of difficulty over the sanction when Si and her Nans are not allowed to sing anymore And What's interesting for Holdi Gar with the visions that I should have mentioned earlier is that when she has them, hat normal sight isn't interrupted, which is the only I don't I can't think of any other mystics. during that time who has said that Uually if you had a vision you're like transported somewhere else and you lose your like bodily inverted common site, but She saw everything as it was, but then also the vision on top of it And yeah, and she was having these and they were often, you know, took a lot out of her. you know, she talks about what a toll they had on her physically and mentally. Yeah, you know, seeing the living light of God will do that, I think. Yes. I thought rather a lot, right? You know we absolutely know as well that As you say, you know, the reports that there are all these rainbows when she dies. This is kind of part of this effort to canatonize her That doesn't get anywhere. I mean, it was just a few years ago, really, it was you know, in twenty twelve, wasn't it? Yeah, twenty twelve, which is, you know, and people refer to as a saint throughout history. You get kind of people throughout Europe after she's died writing about her as a saint she had tons of miracles to her name. She was prolific. you know, she had the sanction of the Pope. My understanding is it was extremely difficult at this time for anyone much to be canonized. and by the time they got round to doing the sort of inquiry into canonization It about sixty years had passed because there's a little girl who gives testimony when she's sort of an older woman He sort of says this is what I saw when I was at her deathbed and just kind of the reason she didn't get it was almost like on a technicality. They said that the details of the miracles were not specific enough. Oh gosh. Listen in the accounts chur But then it so many years have gone by, right? The church wilds me out with this because it's like this is we're smack dab in the middle of the St Bernardo Clairevau a with her he gets canonized right away and all he ever did was be a jerk And it's like, know, as though that's some kind of a miracle. No, whereereas you know she does all of these incredible things and you know, we're fighting for it in the twenty first century, right? Yes.. That's such a good comparison actually, the fact that Bernard, who was just a grumpy angry man wandering around, yelling at everyone you know, got it so quickly and as you say, you know, she had far more miracles than he did was probably as if not better known than he was by that point. You know, it feels I couldn't believe it actually. I was like And of course when you're reading some of the older books about her, some of the older scholarship, you know, they're like, and she's still not a saint ' they weree in pre twenty twelve. And you're like, God, imagine. That's crazy, you know. And I remember being quite shocked because I think that I was raised in such a Catholic context that she was often presented to me as a saint Yes Yeah. And so yeah, I don't know, like it's I don't know, the Judgeuits were running cover on that one pretty hard, I guess. So that's not good for you know, but yeah ye. But she's like, yeah, she's the saint who who everyone referred to as a saint but didn't get her cannalization. She's the abbess who never actually got to be an abess, even though it was referred to by everyone as an abbess. sort of Even though she did so many incredible things, I wonder I feel like she must have had a sense always of these things that were still slightly out of reach, even for her, even though she was doing all these things at other people couldn't have done or wouldn't have dreamt of. And I wonder if that's what kept us striving so hard. I mean, I think that it is actually quite an interesting testament that even in the Year of our Lord twenty twelve, when it is that she was canonized you people were still clamoring for it. You People like us really wanted to see it happening. And I think that it is certainly the case that this is a woman who certainly has a legacy that is still influencing people now Yeah, and I think that's testament to the body of work and the variety, but also I think just to the humanity of her. Like whenever you're reading her letters or her writing, she just seems Like the kind of teacher you would have wanted at school, like really firm, but really encouraging, really kind and like really inspiring and motivational she always seems to strike such a good balance between, you know like I'm marking a lot of essays at the moment. you try and like balance like being critical with being encouraging. but she just seemed to really, really care.