Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen led a Benedictine community on the Rhine and became one of the most extraordinary figures of the Middle Ages: a visionary who recorded her “showings” in Scivias, a composer of luminous chant, a writer on medicine and the natural world, and now a Doctor of the Church.

At the center of her vision is viriditas — the moist, green life-force she saw surging through creation as the very life of God: “I am the fiery life, flaming above the beauty of the fields, shining in the waters, burning in the sun, the moon and the stars.”

For Hildegard, to contemplate a green and growing thing is to touch the Spirit who greens it — and who longs to green the dry and grey places in us.