ABSTRACT
Abbess, preacher, prophet, poet—Hildegard revealed in her writings an extraordinary genius and personal energy. During Hildegard’s lifetime, the Church wanted more control. Hildegard’s contemporary, Pope Gregory VII, won supporters to his cause, and a schism developed. The woman who would be known as the “Sybil of the Rhine” was born into a noble family at Bermersheim near Alzey. Hildegard's visions, converted into marvelous, even hallucinating poetry and prose, are characterized by lights, fires, smokes, and stenches. In the last year of her life when she was over eighty, Hildegard became embroiled in a controversy when she agreed to the burial of a nobleman, said to be excommunicated, at Rupertsberg. For Hildegard, the feminine divinity in her writing is represented with maternal fecundity and procreative force, not—as among later German mystics like Mechthild of Magdeburg—with the bridal and erotic imagery of the celestial marriage.
