Illumination from the Liber Scivias showing Hildegard receiving a vision. Hildegard of Bingen OSB (German: Hildegard von. Problems playing this file? Hildegard-of-Bingen-Scivias.pdf - docs.google.com.

Full text of ' PENGUIN CLASSICS HILDEGARD OF BINGEN: SELECTED WRITINGS HILDEGARD OF BINGEN was born into a noble family in Bermersheim in 1098. At the age of eight her family gave her into the care of a religious noblewoman, Jutta of Spanheim, who took Hildegard with her to become a recluse at the Disibodenberg monastery. Some time between 1112 and 1115, when the monastery became a convent, Hildegard took religious vows. After Jutta’s death in 1136, Hildegard was elected abbess at Disibodenberg. At this time she started to write about the visions she had been experiencing.

Her first work, Scivias, appeared with Papal approval in 1151, just after she had established her own religious community at Rupertsberg, near Bingen. Her collection of religious songs, the Symphonia, appeared in 1158. She then produced a number of other works, including The Book of Life’s Merits (c. 1163), The Book of Divine Works (c.

113), lives of local saints, and various musical, scientific and medical works. She also invented a private language, which formed the basis of two short works, The Unknown Language and The Unknown Alphabet (both completed by 1158). Hildegard was by this time regarded as a mystic and prophetess, and she came to be known as the ‘Sibyl of the Rhine’. In about 1158 she undertook the first of her preaching tours throughout Germany, a very unusual venture for a medieval abbess. This was followed by three further tours in 1160, 1161-3 and 1170-71.

She founded a second monastery at Eibingen in 1165. Hildegard died in 1179. She was celebrated as a saint in the Rhineland and in the fifteenth century her feast day was established as 17 September. MARK ATHERTON studied modern languages at Oxford. He trained as a teacher at Bangor and in medieval studies at York, where he completed a doctorate on the linguist and philologist Henry Sweet. He has taught English language, literature and translation at universities in Cologne and Brussels, and researched and published mainly on early medieval literature.

After a period as research associate in Anglo-Saxon studies at the University of Manchester, he is now fellow of the Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture, Regent’s Park College, Oxford. Hildegard of Bingen SELECTED WRITINGS Translated with an introduction and notes by MARK ATHERTON PENGUIN BOOKS CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I LIFE AND CAREER II HILDEGARD IN HER TIME III HILDEGARD’S WRITINGS FURTHER READING SELECT DISCOGRAPHY CHRONOLOGY TRANSLATOR’S NOTE KNOW THE WAYS 1. Letter to Bernard of Clairvaux 2. The Action of the Will (from Scivias) 3. Redemption (from Scivias) 4. Letter to Odo of Soissons 5. The Trinity (from Scivias) 6.

Letter to Pope Eugenius III STRUGGLES FOR INDEPENDENCE 7. Songs for Saint Disibod 8. Letter to Hartwig of Bremen 9. Song for Saint Ursula 10. The Trials of the Soul (from Scivias) 11.

Songs for Saint Rupert 12. The Departure of Richardis of Stade 13. The First Version of The Play of the Virtues (from Scivias) THE SIBYL OF THE RHINE 14. Three Political Letters 15. Songs for the Dedication of a Church 16. Teachings on the Church (from Scivias) 17. Letter to Elisabeth of Schonau 18.

Gertrud of Stahleck 19. Letter to the Abbess of Bamberg IN PRAISE OF CREATION 20. The Cosmic Egg (from Scivias) 21.

The Cosmos (from Causes and Cures) 22. Gemstones (from Physica) 23. Assimil ingles americano pdf free.

Songs from Symphonia 24. Two Christmas Homilies ALLEGORIES OF JUSTICE AND LOVE 25. The Iron Mountain (from Scivias) 26. The Man Looking East and South (from The Book of Life’s Merits) 27.

The Seven Vices and Virtues (from The Book of Life’s Merits) 28. The Voice from Heaven (from The Book of Life’s Merits) 29. The Unknown Language 30. Allegorical Letters 31.

A Vision of Love (from The Book of Divine Works) HILDEGARD’S LIFE AND INFLUENCE 32. Queries and Requests: Selected Letters to Hildegard 33. From The Life of Hildegard, Book 2, by Theoderich of Echternach 34. Gebeno of Eberbach: The Pentachronon 35.

From the Canonization Protocol NOTES GLOSSARY INTRODUCTION I. LIFE AND CAREER l. The making of a writer In 1146, an unknown and unpublished author, abbess of a small convent of nuns attached to the larger monastery of Disibodenberg in the Rhineland, sent a letter to the great churchman of her day, Bernard of Clairvaux. In her opening words, she emphasized Bernard’s fame and her own unworthiness, before moving to her reason for writing. Despite her lack of education, the writer of the letter claimed she was filled with sophisticated and far-reaching theological visions and interpretations of the Bible. At the same time she also revealed that she was composing elaborate songs and music for use in church, again without having had any specific training.