Hildegard was the tenth child of Hildebert and Mechtild of Bermersheim, members of the free nobility in Rheinhessen, northern Germany. At her birth, her parents promised her to the church, offered as a tithe, or a tenth portion of their wealth. We know the names of most of her siblings, some of whom also joined the ecclesiastical world. There were three brothers: Drutwin was the eldest, about whom nothing else seems to be known. Hugo became precentor at Mainz, and Roricus was canon at Tholy monastery on the Saar River. There were also four sisters: Irmengard, Odilia, Jutta (not to be confused with Jutta of Sponheim), and Clementia, who joined Hildegard’s convent. We thus know of 8 children, not the 10 implied by the “tithe.” It would have been remarkable if all of her siblings survived childhood, and so it may be that these eight were the only ones to reach maturity.6
At age eight, in 1106, the promise made by her parents was formalized (“with sighs,” Hildegard tells us): she was “offered to God into the spiritual way of life” and entered the Benedictine monastery at Disibodenberg. She was the companion of Jutta of Sponheim (1091-1136), another member of the local nobility who also joined the monastery then. Together they became recluses, or anchoresses, living in a stone cell (“tomb”) until Jutta’s death in almost total isolation within the monastery walls. Jutta became Hildegard’s first influence, teaching her the psalter, Latin, and strict religious practice. Hildegard was to spend the next 44 years of her life at Disibodenberg. At age 14, on November 1, 1112, she and Jutta took the vows of a nun.
The monastery at Disibodenberg was dedicated to Saint Disibod (619-700; feast day: September 8), an Irish monk who undertook missionary activities on the European continent from approximately 650, ultimately settling at the confluence of the Nahe and Glanz rivers near Bingen, where he became an anchorite and supervised a monastic community as bishop. Originally it was a small community, but in the early eleventh century it was expanded and was the site of an Augustinian monastery. In 1098, the year of Hildegard’s birth, it became a Benedictine establishment and a building project began, the fruits of which were a new basilica and cloister. Work was completed in 1143. Although the monastery was intended to house only men, a women’s cloister was built in 1112, when Jutta and Hildegard joined the community. The buildings were abandoned in 1560, and today only ruins remain.
In her autobiographical statements, Hildegard relates that, from her earliest years, she had suffered from ill health, accompanied by visions. She described these visions in great detail: a great brightness, concentric circles, shooting stars, and shining lines resembling, according to Hildegard, the ramparts of a celestial city. These were all superimposed on external objects, and when she asked her nurse whether her nurse saw anything but the external objects, the nurse replied, “Nothing.” The details of these descriptions have led many to conclude that Hildegard suffered from “scintillating scotoma,” visual images that often precede migraine headaches, and that the migraines constituted the ill health she suffered.7
At first these visions frightened her, and she did not tell anyone of them. When the visions were upon her, she often told of future events or made other statements that were incomprehensible to those who heard her. When the visions passed, she was embarrassed at her behavior and returned to her customary silence. At approximately the age of eight, when she entered Disi-bodenberg, she began to discuss these visions with Jutta, who later told the monk Volmar about them. He, in turn, encouraged Hildegard to write them down and show them to him, so that he could determine if they were truly from God. He concluded that the visions were of divine origin. Volmar became Hildegard’s secretary and friend, and together they began create a record of her visions. Manuscript illuminations show Hildegard in her scriptorium writing down the visions she receives from heaven, while Volmar looks on. Their collaboration lasted until Volmar’s death in 1173.
Hildegard was convinced that these visions were a gift of prophecy from God. She said that they allowed her to understand scripture (both Old and New Testament), the writings of church fathers, and the writings of certain philosophers, all without human instruction. They also allowed her to compose and perform poetry and music, although she said she had never learned musical notation or singing. She thus joins that group of artists (Beethoven, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet) who were able to create works not in spite of their physical infirmities but because of them.
Virtually nothing is known about Hildegard’s actual life at Disibodenberg. Hildegard herself, in her autobiographical statements, is more interested in detailing her spiritual development. The primary sources of information we have about her life—her letters—do not begin until 1148, and the biographies compiled later had as their goal the justification for sainthood, not the recording of history.
It seems clear that a growing number of women were attracted to Disi-bodenberg and that the number of nuns grew over the course of Hildegard’s life there, but we have no idea how the two-person anchorhold of 1106 became the thriving Benedictine convent of 1136. We know that Jutta, as senior member of the convent, became its mother superior, possibly with Hildegard as assistant. We also know that Volmar became the confessor and spiritual advisor to Jutta and Hildegard and that later he served as teacher, counselor, and secretary to Hildegard. But we have no evidence of what her educational experience was like, either with Volmar or as a member of the community. Certainly she heard the divine office chanted every day, and she probably participated in its performance. Certainly she learned Latin, the psalms, the structure of the liturgy, the basic tenets of the Rule of Saint Benedict, and the many things necessary for her to be a functioning member of the community. Perhaps she worked in the scriptorium and learned to write both Latin and music. Perhaps she worked in the hospital facilities and acquired the medical knowledge she later related in Physica and Causae et curae. The first certain piece of evidence we have comes from 1136. In that year Jutta died, and the nuns selected Hildegard as the mother superior to succeed her. Little, however, is known about the daily course of Hildegard’s life for the next five years.
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