Hildegard of Bingen's Causes and Cures

Critic Timothy Valentine once called Hildegard von Bingen a “figure with potential for superstardom in the 1990s,” and his prediction has come true (20). During the past few years scholars and enthusiasts in diverse fields have been making valuable new insights and arguments about the life and work of the twelfth-century German abbess. In fact, a cottage industry has literally sprung up around the multi-faceted nun. ¹ Religion scholars now note the myriad ways in which Hildegard von Bingen presented herself as a unique mystic and messenger for God. Iconologists highlight the detailed and imaginative symbolism of the religious visions which she recorded. Musicologists praise the innovative manner in which she altered and re-wrote traditional Gregorian chant structure. Linguists argue that Hildegard's Lingua ignota is the only imaginary language that still exists intact from the Middle Ages. And an increasing number of homeopathic doctors and herbalists now use Hildegard's medical prescriptions and cures in their daily practices. No one to my knowledge, however, has written yet about Hildegard's tantalizing feminist intervention into the volatile twelfth-century doctor-cook debate. My particular reading of Hildegard's medical text Causes and Cures, then, is a contribution to and complication of the growing corpus of scholarship which is stacking up in the Hildegard cottage. ²