WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.919 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I have to be honest 00:00:02.919 --> 00:00:05.259 with you, looking at the stack of research we 00:00:05.259 --> 00:00:07.719 have on the desk today, I am feeling a distinct 00:00:07.719 --> 00:00:10.060 sense of inadequacy. Oh, I know that feeling. 00:00:10.259 --> 00:00:12.580 Usually we tackle a subject that fits into a 00:00:12.580 --> 00:00:14.800 nice tidy category. You know, we do a history 00:00:14.800 --> 00:00:17.079 dive or a science dives or a music appreciation 00:00:17.079 --> 00:00:20.839 session. We stay in our lane. And today, the 00:00:20.839 --> 00:00:24.289 lane is gone. We are off -roading. We are completely 00:00:24.289 --> 00:00:26.949 off the map because if we tried to categorize 00:00:26.949 --> 00:00:29.550 today's subject, we'd be here all day just listing 00:00:29.550 --> 00:00:31.690 the labels. It's almost impossible. We're talking 00:00:31.690 --> 00:00:35.009 about a 12th century Benedictine nun. But if 00:00:35.009 --> 00:00:38.350 I just say nun, you picture someone praying quietly 00:00:38.350 --> 00:00:41.869 in a corner, and that is not this woman. Not 00:00:41.869 --> 00:00:44.469 even close, no. If you look at her CV, it reads 00:00:44.469 --> 00:00:46.829 like a fever dream of productivity. It's almost 00:00:46.829 --> 00:00:49.420 unbelievable. It really is. We are talking about 00:00:49.420 --> 00:00:52.100 a mystic visionary, a composer of music that 00:00:52.100 --> 00:00:54.520 is, I mean, still on the charts today. Which 00:00:54.520 --> 00:00:57.140 is wild to think about. It is. And then a philosopher, 00:00:57.439 --> 00:01:00.359 a medical writer, a practitioner of holistic 00:01:00.359 --> 00:01:03.399 medicine, a linguist who invented her own language 00:01:03.399 --> 00:01:06.560 just for the fun of it, and a poet. And a political 00:01:06.560 --> 00:01:08.780 consultant to the most powerful men in Europe. 00:01:08.939 --> 00:01:11.079 Let's not forget that. Exactly. I mean, she was 00:01:11.079 --> 00:01:13.659 a universal genius centuries before the Renaissance 00:01:13.659 --> 00:01:16.780 even gave us a term for it. We are talking, of 00:01:16.780 --> 00:01:19.799 course, about Hildegard of Bingen, the Sybil 00:01:19.799 --> 00:01:22.620 of the Rhine. And the mission for this deep dive 00:01:22.620 --> 00:01:25.739 is pretty specific. We want to understand how. 00:01:26.200 --> 00:01:29.900 How does a sickly 10th child who is literally 00:01:29.900 --> 00:01:33.159 locked into a stone cell at age eight become 00:01:33.159 --> 00:01:35.939 one of the loudest, most influential voices of 00:01:35.939 --> 00:01:37.719 the Middle Ages? And not just influential. And 00:01:37.719 --> 00:01:39.980 that's the mission part that intrigues me. Why 00:01:39.980 --> 00:01:42.579 is she influential now? Right. Why are techno 00:01:42.579 --> 00:01:46.579 DJs in Berlin sampling her chants? Why are feminist 00:01:46.579 --> 00:01:49.480 scholars dissecting her letters? Why are holistic 00:01:49.480 --> 00:01:52.000 healers selling Hildegard stones? It's true. 00:01:52.060 --> 00:01:54.099 She seems to be everywhere all of a sudden. She 00:01:54.099 --> 00:01:57.689 is this massive. multifaceted prism and everyone 00:01:57.689 --> 00:01:59.469 sees a different color when they look at her. 00:01:59.590 --> 00:02:01.329 So let's go back to the source of the light. 00:02:01.390 --> 00:02:03.790 We need to start with the origin story. And it 00:02:03.790 --> 00:02:06.609 really does feel like a superhero origin story, 00:02:06.709 --> 00:02:08.789 doesn't it? Starting with the tragic backstory. 00:02:08.969 --> 00:02:11.439 It really does. It's 1098. the very end of the 00:02:11.439 --> 00:02:13.680 11th century. Yeah, the First Crusade is kicking 00:02:13.680 --> 00:02:17.479 off. Europe is in the state of, you know, aggressive 00:02:17.479 --> 00:02:21.139 expansion and religious fervor. And in the Rhineland, 00:02:21.319 --> 00:02:24.379 in the service of the Count of Sponheim, a girl 00:02:24.379 --> 00:02:27.960 is born to a noble family. Hildebert and Mechtild 00:02:27.960 --> 00:02:31.319 are her parents. And immediately, we hit a concept 00:02:31.319 --> 00:02:33.240 in the sources that stopped me in my tracks. 00:02:33.639 --> 00:02:36.939 The tithe. It's a heavy concept. It's not something 00:02:36.939 --> 00:02:38.900 we really think about in human terms anymore. 00:02:39.159 --> 00:02:42.460 Most people know a tithe as, you know, 10 % of 00:02:42.460 --> 00:02:44.099 your paycheck you might put in the church offering 00:02:44.099 --> 00:02:46.500 plate. Yeah. But the sources suggest her parents 00:02:46.500 --> 00:02:49.180 tithed her. That's the tradition, yes. It's a 00:02:49.180 --> 00:02:52.000 fascinating window into the medieval noble mindset. 00:02:52.400 --> 00:02:55.180 The tradition holds that Hildegard was the 10th 00:02:55.180 --> 00:02:58.500 child. The 10th. And just as you owe God 10 % 00:02:58.500 --> 00:03:01.340 of your harvest or 10 % of your coin, these parents 00:03:01.340 --> 00:03:04.460 believe they owed God 10 % of their human output. 00:03:04.780 --> 00:03:07.419 Well, just hear God. We had 10. This one is yours. 00:03:07.740 --> 00:03:09.879 Essentially, yes. It was viewed as a pious act, 00:03:10.020 --> 00:03:12.300 a way to accrue spiritual capital for the family. 00:03:12.460 --> 00:03:14.919 It was a good look, so to speak. But there's 00:03:14.919 --> 00:03:16.949 a practical side to it, too, isn't there? Oh, 00:03:16.949 --> 00:03:19.009 absolutely. We have to be realistic about the 00:03:19.009 --> 00:03:21.870 economics of feudalism, too. Having 10 children 00:03:21.870 --> 00:03:24.310 is expensive. You have to split the inheritance 00:03:24.310 --> 00:03:27.310 for the sons. You have to find substantial dowries 00:03:27.310 --> 00:03:30.330 for the daughters. That's a huge financial burden. 00:03:30.569 --> 00:03:33.069 So sending a child to the church was also a way 00:03:33.069 --> 00:03:35.009 of balancing the family books? It was a career 00:03:35.009 --> 00:03:37.870 path and a financial relief valve. Though I should 00:03:37.870 --> 00:03:41.550 add a footnote here. Historians debate the 10th 00:03:41.550 --> 00:03:45.340 child claim. Yeah. We only have records for seven 00:03:45.340 --> 00:03:47.979 older siblings. So it's possible 10th was added 00:03:47.979 --> 00:03:50.419 later to make her sound more biblically significant, 00:03:50.639 --> 00:03:53.000 like a perfect offering. A bit of retroactive 00:03:53.000 --> 00:03:55.740 PR. You could say that. But whether she was the 00:03:55.740 --> 00:03:58.240 10th or the 8th, the result was the same. She 00:03:58.240 --> 00:04:00.969 was marked for the church from the cradle. And 00:04:00.969 --> 00:04:03.229 she wasn't exactly a prime candidate for strategic 00:04:03.229 --> 00:04:05.389 marriage anyway, was she? The sources are pretty 00:04:05.389 --> 00:04:08.430 clear on that. No. She was described as sickly 00:04:08.430 --> 00:04:11.210 from birth. She was frail. She had trouble walking. 00:04:11.409 --> 00:04:14.069 In a brutal physical world, she wouldn't have 00:04:14.069 --> 00:04:17.050 survived the rigors of running a castle or, you 00:04:17.050 --> 00:04:20.189 know, enduring 10 childbirths of her own. The 00:04:20.189 --> 00:04:24.170 convent was, in a way, a survival strategy. A 00:04:24.170 --> 00:04:26.449 safe harbor. A very specific kind of safe harbor, 00:04:26.529 --> 00:04:29.500 yes. But while her body was weak... Her mind 00:04:29.500 --> 00:04:32.360 was doing something. Yeah. Unexplained. She wrote 00:04:32.360 --> 00:04:34.420 about this much later when she was 77 years old, 00:04:34.500 --> 00:04:36.800 looking back. Yeah, in her autobiography. She 00:04:36.800 --> 00:04:38.579 said she started seeing things at age three. 00:04:38.920 --> 00:04:41.839 Three years old. Just imagine that. A toddler. 00:04:42.139 --> 00:04:44.579 She called it the shade of the living light, 00:04:44.779 --> 00:04:49.579 umbra viventis lucis. And I want to be really 00:04:49.579 --> 00:04:52.100 specific here because when we say visionary or 00:04:52.100 --> 00:04:56.100 mystic, I think we tend to picture someone having 00:04:56.100 --> 00:04:59.240 a seizure. or fasting until they hallucinate 00:04:59.240 --> 00:05:02.199 or dreaming. Right, the ecstatic state. You leave 00:05:02.199 --> 00:05:04.759 your body and God enters. That's the classic 00:05:04.759 --> 00:05:06.740 model. But that's not what she described. No, 00:05:06.800 --> 00:05:08.699 Hildegard was adamant that this was not what 00:05:08.699 --> 00:05:10.759 happened to her. She was very precise about it. 00:05:10.800 --> 00:05:12.879 She wrote, I do not hear them with my outward 00:05:12.879 --> 00:05:14.899 ears, nor do I perceive them by the thoughts 00:05:14.899 --> 00:05:17.740 of my own heart, but in my soul alone while my 00:05:17.740 --> 00:05:20.019 outward eyes are open. So she's sitting at the 00:05:20.019 --> 00:05:22.500 dinner table, fully awake, maybe holding a spoon, 00:05:22.699 --> 00:05:25.279 looking at her parents, and simultaneously she 00:05:25.279 --> 00:05:28.879 is seeing. An augmented reality. That's exactly 00:05:28.879 --> 00:05:31.759 how I think of it. It's an AR overlay on reality. 00:05:32.300 --> 00:05:34.779 She described a light that was brighter than 00:05:34.779 --> 00:05:37.980 a cloud carrying the sun. And within that light, 00:05:38.120 --> 00:05:42.259 she saw architectural forms, people. writing, 00:05:42.259 --> 00:05:45.439 symbols. It was a constant dual consciousness. 00:05:45.759 --> 00:05:47.639 He was living in two worlds at once. All the 00:05:47.639 --> 00:05:49.839 time. That sounds terrifying for a toddler. It 00:05:49.839 --> 00:05:51.980 was isolating. I mean, how could you explain 00:05:51.980 --> 00:05:54.959 that? There's a famous anecdote where, as a very 00:05:54.959 --> 00:05:57.879 young child, she looked at a pregnant cow and 00:05:57.879 --> 00:06:00.459 described the color of the calf inside the womb. 00:06:00.620 --> 00:06:04.620 No way. Yes. And her nurse was freaked out. Hildegard 00:06:04.620 --> 00:06:06.740 realized very quickly that other people didn't 00:06:06.740 --> 00:06:08.860 have this second sight, and she learned to shut 00:06:08.860 --> 00:06:11.120 up about it. She hid it. So she has this secret. 00:06:11.199 --> 00:06:14.079 She's sickly. She's tithed. And then comes the 00:06:14.079 --> 00:06:16.100 enclosure. This is the part of the story that 00:06:16.100 --> 00:06:18.220 gave me genuine claustrophobia reading about 00:06:18.220 --> 00:06:20.980 it. Oh, it's intense. She is sent away to Dizzy 00:06:20.980 --> 00:06:23.319 Bodenberg. A male monastery that had a small 00:06:23.319 --> 00:06:25.319 annex for women of frown clothes. And she is 00:06:25.319 --> 00:06:28.540 placed in the care of Jette von Sponheim. Who 00:06:28.540 --> 00:06:31.920 is Jette? Judah is a key figure. You can't understand 00:06:31.920 --> 00:06:35.110 Hildegard without understanding Judah. She was 00:06:35.110 --> 00:06:37.449 the daughter of a count, beautiful, wealthy, 00:06:37.769 --> 00:06:40.829 about six years older than Hildegard. And she 00:06:40.829 --> 00:06:43.589 decided to reject the world entirely. She chose 00:06:43.589 --> 00:06:46.209 to become an anchoress. We need to define anchoress 00:06:46.209 --> 00:06:48.529 because it's not just a nun. It's a whole other 00:06:48.529 --> 00:06:50.730 level. A whole other level. A nun lives in a 00:06:50.730 --> 00:06:53.050 community, works in the garden, serves the poor. 00:06:53.290 --> 00:06:56.970 An anchoress is an anchor. She is literally walled 00:06:56.970 --> 00:07:00.449 into a cell attached to the church for life. 00:07:00.649 --> 00:07:03.110 Literally walled in, like with bricks and mortar. 00:07:03.480 --> 00:07:06.500 Often, yes. There was a formal ceremony called 00:07:06.500 --> 00:07:09.560 the rite of enclosure. It was essentially a funeral 00:07:09.560 --> 00:07:11.939 service for a living person. Oh, my God. The 00:07:11.939 --> 00:07:14.000 bishop would read the office of the dead. The 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:16.600 anchors would lie on a beer like a corpse. They 00:07:16.600 --> 00:07:18.720 would sprinkle dust on her and then they would 00:07:18.720 --> 00:07:20.819 walk her into the cell, lock the door and sometimes, 00:07:20.920 --> 00:07:24.040 yes, seal it with stone. She was dead to the 00:07:24.040 --> 00:07:26.800 world, alive only to God. An eight -year -old 00:07:26.800 --> 00:07:29.060 Hildegard goes into that cell with her. That's 00:07:29.060 --> 00:07:32.759 the setting. A hermitage. Just a stone room with 00:07:32.759 --> 00:07:35.160 one small window looking into the church so they 00:07:35.160 --> 00:07:37.839 could hear mass, and one window looking out to 00:07:37.839 --> 00:07:40.879 the world to receive food. For 30 years. Roughly, 00:07:40.879 --> 00:07:46.100 yes. From about 1112 to 1136. Just imagine the 00:07:46.100 --> 00:07:48.379 psychological pressure cooker of that. Two women, 00:07:48.519 --> 00:07:51.259 one a charismatic ascetic, one a sickly visionary 00:07:51.259 --> 00:07:54.420 child trapped in a stone box. But it wasn't just 00:07:54.420 --> 00:07:56.680 staring at the wall. This is where Hildegard 00:07:56.680 --> 00:07:59.839 gets her education. such as it was right judah 00:07:59.839 --> 00:08:02.699 taught her to read the psalter the book of psalms 00:08:02.699 --> 00:08:05.180 and this is crucial the psalms are the heartbeat 00:08:05.180 --> 00:08:07.740 of benedictine life they would recite them constantly 00:08:07.740 --> 00:08:10.980 constantly they recited all 150 psalms every 00:08:10.980 --> 00:08:13.420 single week so hildegard absorbed the rhythm 00:08:13.420 --> 00:08:15.699 the poetry the imagery of the psalms into her 00:08:15.699 --> 00:08:17.779 bones that's why her later writing sounds so 00:08:17.779 --> 00:08:19.740 biblical she was marinating in it for decades 00:08:19.740 --> 00:08:22.720 and she learned music yes judah taught her to 00:08:22.720 --> 00:08:25.540 play the psaltery a 10 stringed instrument sort 00:08:25.540 --> 00:08:27.709 of like a zither so in the In the darkness of 00:08:27.709 --> 00:08:30.089 that cell, there was language and there was music. 00:08:30.310 --> 00:08:35.669 Fast forward. It's 1136. Jida dies. The cell 00:08:35.669 --> 00:08:37.629 has actually grown into a small convent by this 00:08:37.629 --> 00:08:40.429 point because so many other women were inspired 00:08:40.429 --> 00:08:42.330 by Jida and wanted to join them. Right, the community 00:08:42.330 --> 00:08:44.870 had grown around them. And Hildegard, now in 00:08:44.870 --> 00:08:47.450 her late 30s, is elected magistra. She's the 00:08:47.450 --> 00:08:50.269 boss. She's in charge. But she's still hiding 00:08:50.269 --> 00:08:53.149 the big secret, the visions. She's only told 00:08:53.149 --> 00:08:55.450 Jida and a monk named Volmar about the full extent 00:08:55.450 --> 00:08:58.850 of them. Ah. Volmar. He's the third character 00:08:58.850 --> 00:09:01.429 in this early drama. He's her tutor, her secretary, 00:09:01.590 --> 00:09:03.610 her confessor. And her greatest cheerleader, 00:09:03.789 --> 00:09:05.690 her biggest supporter. He's the one who kept 00:09:05.690 --> 00:09:07.590 telling her, you aren't crazy, this is a gift 00:09:07.590 --> 00:09:10.269 from God. He believed her. He did, which was 00:09:10.269 --> 00:09:13.870 essential. But then comes the year 1141. Hildegard 00:09:13.870 --> 00:09:18.470 is 42. And the living light changes. It stops 00:09:18.470 --> 00:09:20.929 being a passive movie she watches and becomes 00:09:20.929 --> 00:09:23.149 an active command. This is the moment everything 00:09:23.149 --> 00:09:25.940 pivots. She receives a vision she describes as 00:09:25.940 --> 00:09:28.419 a stream of fire entering her brain, and a voice 00:09:28.419 --> 00:09:31.080 says, write down that which you see and hear. 00:09:31.299 --> 00:09:33.879 And her reaction is so relatable. It's not, yes, 00:09:33.899 --> 00:09:35.700 Lord, I've been waiting for this. It's panic. 00:09:36.279 --> 00:09:39.360 Absolute terror. She writes, I refuse to write. 00:09:39.789 --> 00:09:42.029 Not out of stubbornness, but out of humility 00:09:42.029 --> 00:09:44.629 and the doubt of unworthiness and the fear of 00:09:44.629 --> 00:09:47.149 gossip. The diversity of human words, as she 00:09:47.149 --> 00:09:49.730 put it. Exactly. She was terrified of being labeled 00:09:49.730 --> 00:09:53.149 a heretic, a woman writing theology, a woman 00:09:53.149 --> 00:09:55.950 claiming to speak for God. That's how you get 00:09:55.950 --> 00:09:57.769 investigated. That's how you get burned at the 00:09:57.769 --> 00:10:01.250 stake. So she resists. She says no. And then. 00:10:01.639 --> 00:10:03.539 and this is the pattern that defines her life 00:10:03.539 --> 00:10:07.340 the divine strike happens yes she falls physically 00:10:07.340 --> 00:10:10.440 ill and not just i have a headache she describes 00:10:10.440 --> 00:10:14.440 being paralyzed bedridden in agony. It's psychosomatic 00:10:14.440 --> 00:10:16.720 in the most extreme sense. Well, Hildegard would 00:10:16.720 --> 00:10:18.519 say the body and soul are completely connected. 00:10:18.799 --> 00:10:21.820 If the soul resists its God -given purpose, the 00:10:21.820 --> 00:10:25.080 body breaks. She explicitly attributed this illness 00:10:25.080 --> 00:10:27.480 to her disobedience. It was a battle of wills 00:10:27.480 --> 00:10:29.340 between her fear and Graz command. And the pain 00:10:29.340 --> 00:10:31.340 wins. Eventually, she can't take it anymore. 00:10:31.740 --> 00:10:34.419 She calls for Volmar. She calls for one of her 00:10:34.419 --> 00:10:36.840 nuns, a close friend named Richardus von Stade, 00:10:36.919 --> 00:10:39.919 and she says, okay, all right. And the moment 00:10:39.919 --> 00:10:42.279 she picks up the wax tablet to start dictating, 00:10:42.789 --> 00:10:45.549 She recovers. Just like that. Just like that, 00:10:45.710 --> 00:10:48.929 the illness lifts. And that brings us to section 00:10:48.929 --> 00:10:52.570 two, the visionary theology. Because she doesn't 00:10:52.570 --> 00:10:56.070 just write a diary. She writes civius. Civius, 00:10:56.210 --> 00:10:59.750 which means know the ways. It took 10 years to 00:10:59.750 --> 00:11:02.509 complete. It's a massive volume documenting 26 00:11:02.509 --> 00:11:05.289 major visions. But here's the problem. You can't 00:11:05.289 --> 00:11:07.750 just publish a book like that in 1147. You need 00:11:07.750 --> 00:11:09.809 a permit, right? You need the church to say, 00:11:09.909 --> 00:11:13.090 this is legit. Especially as a woman. If she 00:11:13.090 --> 00:11:14.789 had released this on her own, she would have 00:11:14.789 --> 00:11:18.169 been silenced immediately. Or worse. But providence, 00:11:18.230 --> 00:11:20.710 or maybe some clever maneuvering, intervened. 00:11:20.870 --> 00:11:23.950 Pope Eugenius III was nearby at a synod in Cher. 00:11:24.370 --> 00:11:26.950 This is the high -stakes moment. The abbot of 00:11:26.950 --> 00:11:30.149 Dissabodenburg, a man named Cuno, realizes, hey, 00:11:30.230 --> 00:11:32.090 this nun might be famous. This could be good 00:11:32.090 --> 00:11:34.429 for us. He sees an opportunity. He takes a chunk 00:11:34.429 --> 00:11:36.370 of the unfinished book to the pope. Picture the 00:11:36.370 --> 00:11:38.769 scene. A room full of cardinals, bishops, the 00:11:38.769 --> 00:11:41.330 pope himself, all men, all highly educated in 00:11:41.330 --> 00:11:43.889 formal dogma. And they are reviewing the wild, 00:11:44.070 --> 00:11:46.870 rambling, fiery writings of an uneducated nun 00:11:46.870 --> 00:11:49.049 from a backwater convent. It could have gone 00:11:49.049 --> 00:11:50.889 so wrong. So wrong, they could have declared 00:11:50.889 --> 00:11:53.409 it heresy on the spot. But the pope reads it. 00:11:53.529 --> 00:11:56.090 He has it read aloud to the entire assembly. 00:11:56.330 --> 00:11:59.429 And he is moved. He sends a letter back to Hildegard, 00:11:59.570 --> 00:12:01.990 giving her his apostolic blessing and commanding 00:12:01.990 --> 00:12:03.830 her to write more. That is the golden ticket. 00:12:04.090 --> 00:12:06.950 It changed everything. It gave her instant credence. 00:12:07.250 --> 00:12:09.990 She was no longer just some strange nun. She 00:12:09.990 --> 00:12:12.090 was a prophetess. She had the pope a seal of 00:12:12.090 --> 00:12:14.870 approval. That made her untouchable. So what's 00:12:14.870 --> 00:12:16.769 in the book? I've seen the illustrations from 00:12:16.769 --> 00:12:20.210 the Rupertsburg manuscript. Yeah. They are, well. 00:12:20.700 --> 00:12:22.320 Trippy is the only word that comes to mind. They 00:12:22.320 --> 00:12:24.799 are incredibly complex. She describes the universe, 00:12:24.980 --> 00:12:27.860 for instance, as a cosmic egg. A literal egg. 00:12:28.120 --> 00:12:31.460 Yes. An oval structure. The outer shell is bright 00:12:31.460 --> 00:12:34.259 fire. Then there's a layer of black fire. Then 00:12:34.259 --> 00:12:37.600 pure ether, watery air, and so on. It's a complete 00:12:37.600 --> 00:12:40.100 cosmology. She's trying to explain how the physical 00:12:40.100 --> 00:12:42.779 universe is held together by God's power, all 00:12:42.779 --> 00:12:45.559 visualized in this one image. And the art style, 00:12:45.740 --> 00:12:48.639 there are these strange, jagged lines, stars 00:12:48.639 --> 00:12:51.539 that look like fortifications or walls, figures 00:12:51.539 --> 00:12:53.820 with eyes all over their wings. It's very distinctive. 00:12:55.080 --> 00:12:57.879 Those specific visual details, the shimmering 00:12:57.879 --> 00:13:00.600 lights, the zigzag lines, the fortress shapes, 00:13:00.779 --> 00:13:03.639 led to a very famous modern theory about what 00:13:03.639 --> 00:13:05.480 was going on. Right. This is where the science 00:13:05.480 --> 00:13:09.019 comes in. Yes. In the 20th century, the neurologist 00:13:09.019 --> 00:13:11.720 Oliver Sacks analyzed her descriptions and the 00:13:11.720 --> 00:13:14.779 art. And he had a diagnosis. He proposed that 00:13:14.779 --> 00:13:17.519 Hildegard suffered from severe migraines with 00:13:17.519 --> 00:13:20.139 aura. For listeners who haven't experienced that. 00:13:20.590 --> 00:13:23.809 What exactly does an aura look like? It's a neurological 00:13:23.809 --> 00:13:26.629 event that can precede the headache. The visual 00:13:26.629 --> 00:13:30.090 cortex basically goes haywire. You see scottamata 00:13:30.090 --> 00:13:32.710 blind spots, you see shimmering lights, and you 00:13:32.710 --> 00:13:35.690 see fortification spectra expanding zigzag patterns 00:13:35.690 --> 00:13:38.389 that look exactly like the crenellated walls 00:13:38.389 --> 00:13:40.750 in Hildegard's drawings. Which tracks perfectly 00:13:40.750 --> 00:13:42.710 with her description of the living light. It 00:13:42.710 --> 00:13:44.769 matches the clinical description almost perfectly. 00:13:45.090 --> 00:13:47.690 Sachs argued that the sickness she battled her 00:13:47.690 --> 00:13:50.230 whole life, the illnesses that struck her down 00:13:50.230 --> 00:13:53.110 were likely these chronic debilitating migraines. 00:13:53.149 --> 00:13:55.009 Now, does that explain it away? Does that mean 00:13:55.009 --> 00:13:57.110 she wasn't a mystic, just a headache sufferer? 00:13:57.190 --> 00:13:59.750 No. And Sachs was very clear about this. And 00:13:59.750 --> 00:14:02.029 I agree with him. It explains the mechanism, 00:14:02.169 --> 00:14:04.110 not the meaning. That's a great distinction. 00:14:04.509 --> 00:14:08.259 Hildegard was a genius. She took these debilitating 00:14:08.259 --> 00:14:10.659 neurological events and interpreted them through 00:14:10.659 --> 00:14:13.580 the lens of her profound faith. She didn't just 00:14:13.580 --> 00:14:16.779 suffer. She built a cathedral out of her pain. 00:14:16.899 --> 00:14:20.679 To her, the aura was God speaking. That's a beautiful 00:14:20.679 --> 00:14:23.000 way to put it. She didn't stop at Sivius though. 00:14:23.120 --> 00:14:25.820 She wrote two more massive theological works. 00:14:25.960 --> 00:14:28.960 Right. Liber Vitae Meritorum, the Book of Life's 00:14:28.960 --> 00:14:31.559 Merits. This is where she gets into moral psychology. 00:14:32.179 --> 00:14:35.159 It's structured as this dramatic debate between 00:14:35.159 --> 00:14:37.639 the virtues and the vices. And this is where 00:14:37.639 --> 00:14:40.669 she helps invent purgatory. Or at least popularize 00:14:40.669 --> 00:14:42.730 it. She's one of the early architects of the 00:14:42.730 --> 00:14:44.830 concept as we know it. Before this, the astral 00:14:44.830 --> 00:14:46.929 life was a bit more binary. You know, heaven 00:14:46.929 --> 00:14:49.509 or hell. Hildegard describes a place of purging 00:14:49.509 --> 00:14:51.870 where souls work off their temporal debts before 00:14:51.870 --> 00:14:54.070 entering heaven. And her descriptions of the 00:14:54.070 --> 00:14:57.590 punishments are grotesque. Give us a taste. Well, 00:14:57.649 --> 00:14:59.970 if you were a liar in life, your soul might be 00:14:59.970 --> 00:15:02.250 punished by being gnawed on by toads and snakes 00:15:02.250 --> 00:15:05.110 for a while. If you were a seducer, you might 00:15:05.110 --> 00:15:07.529 find yourself standing in a lake of fire up to 00:15:07.529 --> 00:15:11.549 your loins. That is specific and vivid. It's 00:15:11.549 --> 00:15:14.009 medieval horror. But the point was pastoral. 00:15:14.049 --> 00:15:16.330 It was meant to scare people straight. And then 00:15:16.330 --> 00:15:19.769 her final great work, written in her 70s, Liber 00:15:19.769 --> 00:15:23.549 Divinorum Operum, the Book of Divine Works. This 00:15:23.549 --> 00:15:25.750 is the Grand Unified Theory. This is her masterpiece. 00:15:25.909 --> 00:15:28.610 She connects the microcosm and the macrocosm. 00:15:28.649 --> 00:15:31.870 The classic, as above, so below. Exactly. The 00:15:31.870 --> 00:15:34.730 human body, the microcosm, is a perfect mat of 00:15:34.730 --> 00:15:37.710 the universe, the macrocosm. The winds of the 00:15:37.710 --> 00:15:40.690 world correspond to our breath. The rivers correspond 00:15:40.690 --> 00:15:43.409 to our veins. The structure of the cosmos is 00:15:43.409 --> 00:15:45.929 mirrored in the structure of man. It's this beautiful 00:15:45.929 --> 00:15:48.649 holistic view where physics and theology are 00:15:48.649 --> 00:15:50.990 the same thing. They are completely intertwined. 00:15:50.990 --> 00:15:53.470 There is no separation. It's amazing to think 00:15:53.470 --> 00:15:56.570 of her in her 70s, still trying to solve the 00:15:56.570 --> 00:15:59.539 riddle of the universe. But she wasn't just a 00:15:59.539 --> 00:16:02.080 writer locked in her room. She was a politician. 00:16:03.240 --> 00:16:05.940 And section three of our outline is titled The 00:16:05.940 --> 00:16:08.720 Politician and the Founder. Because this is where 00:16:08.720 --> 00:16:11.279 Hildegard stops being polite. I'm not sure she 00:16:11.279 --> 00:16:13.440 was ever very polite, to be honest. But yes, 00:16:13.539 --> 00:16:15.039 this is where she fights for her independence. 00:16:15.460 --> 00:16:17.600 Okay, so she's at Dissabodenburg. She's famous 00:16:17.600 --> 00:16:19.759 now. Pilgrims are coming to see the visionary. 00:16:20.100 --> 00:16:22.539 The monastery is making money off her fame and 00:16:22.539 --> 00:16:25.379 the donations. Right. She's a major asset. And 00:16:25.379 --> 00:16:27.539 she decides she wants to move. She wants to take 00:16:27.539 --> 00:16:30.639 her grand community of nuns and found a new independent 00:16:30.639 --> 00:16:34.500 convent at a place called Rupertsburg. Why? I 00:16:34.500 --> 00:16:37.019 mean, Disabodenburg was established. It was comfortable. 00:16:37.360 --> 00:16:39.539 Rupertsburg was a ruin on a hill. It was about 00:16:39.539 --> 00:16:42.159 autonomy. At Disabodenburg, she was under the 00:16:42.159 --> 00:16:44.480 thumb of the abbot. The monks controlled the 00:16:44.480 --> 00:16:47.080 finances, the property, and the sacramental life 00:16:47.080 --> 00:16:49.879 of the nuns. Hildegard wanted a space where women 00:16:49.879 --> 00:16:52.679 were self -governing. She wanted to be the abbess 00:16:52.679 --> 00:16:56.750 in truth, not just in title. But Abbot Kuno wasn't 00:16:56.750 --> 00:16:59.309 going to let his golden goose fly the coop. No, 00:16:59.350 --> 00:17:01.909 he refused. He said, absolutely not. You stay 00:17:01.909 --> 00:17:04.750 here. He probably didn't want to lose the prestige 00:17:04.750 --> 00:17:07.430 or, more importantly, the income. And this is 00:17:07.430 --> 00:17:09.990 where we see Hildegard the tactician. She doesn't 00:17:09.990 --> 00:17:12.410 just write a letter of complaint. She invokes 00:17:12.410 --> 00:17:15.470 the divine strike again. She falls ill. But this 00:17:15.470 --> 00:17:18.769 time, the description is frightening. Her biographer 00:17:18.769 --> 00:17:21.849 writes that she became paralyzed and so heavy 00:17:21.849 --> 00:17:24.740 that she could not be lifted from her bed. Supernaturally 00:17:24.740 --> 00:17:27.180 heavy. Is that the claim? That's the claim. The 00:17:27.180 --> 00:17:29.539 abbot tries to physically move her or have her 00:17:29.539 --> 00:17:32.619 moved and she is like lead. She is immovable. 00:17:32.740 --> 00:17:34.980 She claims that God is pinning her down until 00:17:34.980 --> 00:17:36.920 the abbot relents and lets her community go. 00:17:37.099 --> 00:17:39.759 It's a standoff. The immovable nun versus the 00:17:39.759 --> 00:17:42.720 greedy abbot. And the nun wins. The abbot realizes 00:17:42.720 --> 00:17:45.259 he looks terrible. The people are on her side. 00:17:45.319 --> 00:17:47.680 The pope is on her side. And apparently gravity 00:17:47.680 --> 00:17:50.660 is on her side. He caves. He gives in. So in 00:17:50.660 --> 00:17:53.299 1150, she moves to Rupertsburg. She oversees 00:17:53.299 --> 00:17:55.319 the construction. She secures property rights. 00:17:55.779 --> 00:17:58.779 She proves she's a CEO as well as a mystic. Absolutely. 00:17:58.880 --> 00:18:01.619 And once she has her own base of power, she starts 00:18:01.619 --> 00:18:04.480 to project that power outwardly. She undertakes 00:18:04.480 --> 00:18:07.599 preaching tours. We have to pause on how wild 00:18:07.599 --> 00:18:11.480 this is. St. Paul said, I do not permit a woman 00:18:11.480 --> 00:18:14.940 to teach. For centuries, women were not allowed 00:18:14.940 --> 00:18:16.940 to preach in public. It was strictly forbidden. 00:18:17.200 --> 00:18:20.180 But Hildegard went on four major tours up and 00:18:20.180 --> 00:18:23.180 down the Rhine. She spoke in cathedrals, in public 00:18:23.180 --> 00:18:25.779 squares, to huge crowds of clergy and laity, 00:18:25.900 --> 00:18:29.259 an old nun traveling by boat and cart, commanding 00:18:29.259 --> 00:18:31.619 the attention of the entire region. And she wasn't 00:18:31.619 --> 00:18:34.220 giving nice, gentle homilies about love and forgiveness. 00:18:34.380 --> 00:18:37.380 Oh, no. She was roasting them. She attacked the 00:18:37.380 --> 00:18:39.660 clergy for corruption. She attacked simony, the 00:18:39.660 --> 00:18:42.140 buying and selling of church offices. She called 00:18:42.140 --> 00:18:45.019 the priest. dogs who do not bark. Dogs who do 00:18:45.019 --> 00:18:47.220 not bark. That is a savage insult. A watchdog 00:18:47.220 --> 00:18:49.779 that doesn't warn of danger. It is. She told 00:18:49.779 --> 00:18:52.619 them, you are failing God. You are corrupt. So 00:18:52.619 --> 00:18:55.200 God has sent me a weak, poor woman to tell you 00:18:55.200 --> 00:18:57.720 how to do your job. That weak woman rhetoric 00:18:57.720 --> 00:19:01.420 again. So clever. It was her shield. She called 00:19:01.420 --> 00:19:07.299 herself a poor little female figure. By constantly 00:19:07.299 --> 00:19:10.079 emphasizing her own weakness, she made the argument 00:19:10.079 --> 00:19:12.759 that her strength must be supernatural. If a 00:19:12.759 --> 00:19:14.980 man spoke like that, it would be arrogance. If 00:19:14.980 --> 00:19:17.519 a weak woman spoke like that, it was a miracle. 00:19:17.819 --> 00:19:20.319 It's brilliant reverse psychology. And she used 00:19:20.319 --> 00:19:22.880 it on emperors, too. She wrote to Frederick Barbarossa. 00:19:23.059 --> 00:19:26.140 The Holy Roman Emperor. The most powerful man 00:19:26.140 --> 00:19:28.619 in the Christian world. They were friends, or 00:19:28.619 --> 00:19:30.839 at least correspondents for a while. But when 00:19:30.839 --> 00:19:34.900 he supported a rival, Pope and anti -Pope Hildegard 00:19:34.900 --> 00:19:37.460 turned on him. Did she send a polite letter of 00:19:37.460 --> 00:19:39.920 disagreement? No. She wrote a letter that essentially 00:19:39.920 --> 00:19:42.480 said, you are acting like a madman and a child. 00:19:42.579 --> 00:19:44.519 Watch out because the king of kings is watching 00:19:44.519 --> 00:19:47.279 you and he will crush you. She threatened the 00:19:47.279 --> 00:19:50.240 emperor with God's wrath to his face. And she 00:19:50.240 --> 00:19:52.579 survived. Anyone else would have been executed 00:19:52.579 --> 00:19:55.359 for treason. But Hildegard was too respected. 00:19:55.460 --> 00:19:57.740 She had too much moral authority. Barbarossa 00:19:57.740 --> 00:20:00.200 didn't dare touch her. But she wasn't entirely 00:20:00.200 --> 00:20:03.609 invincible. Section three ends with the excommunication 00:20:03.609 --> 00:20:05.970 crisis. And this happens at the very end of her 00:20:05.970 --> 00:20:08.710 life. She's 80 years old. It's her final battle. 00:20:08.930 --> 00:20:11.690 A nobleman who had been a benefactor to the convent 00:20:11.690 --> 00:20:14.529 died. Hildegard allowed him to be buried in the 00:20:14.529 --> 00:20:16.630 convent cemetery. Standard procedure, right? 00:20:16.690 --> 00:20:19.549 Except the clergy in Mainz, the big city nearby, 00:20:19.809 --> 00:20:22.230 claimed this guy had been excommunicated before 00:20:22.230 --> 00:20:25.630 he died. Therefore, his body was unclean. They 00:20:25.630 --> 00:20:28.289 ordered Hildegard to dig him up and throw his 00:20:28.289 --> 00:20:31.609 body out of consecrated ground. It is gruesome. 00:20:31.609 --> 00:20:34.690 What does she do? She refused. She insisted he 00:20:34.690 --> 00:20:36.450 had reconciled with the church before death. 00:20:36.690 --> 00:20:39.329 She refused to violate the sanctity of his grave. 00:20:39.569 --> 00:20:41.650 In fact, she went out to the cemetery with her 00:20:41.650 --> 00:20:44.210 staff and erased all the grave markings so the 00:20:44.210 --> 00:20:46.150 men from Mainz couldn't find the body to dig 00:20:46.150 --> 00:20:48.269 it up themselves. An 80 -year -old nun playing 00:20:48.269 --> 00:20:50.430 a shell game with a corpse to protect a man's 00:20:50.430 --> 00:20:54.269 soul. That is punk rock. The clergy's were furious, 00:20:54.650 --> 00:20:57.410 absolutely livid. They placed her entire convent 00:20:57.410 --> 00:20:59.710 under interdict. Explain what that means for 00:20:59.710 --> 00:21:01.970 the nuns. What are the consequences? It's a collective 00:21:01.970 --> 00:21:04.730 punishment. It's a lockdown. No mass could be 00:21:04.730 --> 00:21:07.250 said. No sacraments could be administered. And 00:21:07.250 --> 00:21:10.130 crucially for Hildegard, no music. They were 00:21:10.130 --> 00:21:12.950 forbidden to sing the divine office. Silence. 00:21:13.230 --> 00:21:15.309 For a community that believed singing was the 00:21:15.309 --> 00:21:17.630 language of angels, that must have been a form 00:21:17.630 --> 00:21:20.450 of torture. It was devastating, but she didn't 00:21:20.450 --> 00:21:23.059 fold. She wrote a blistering letter to the prelates 00:21:23.059 --> 00:21:25.660 of Mainz. She argued that music is the highest 00:21:25.660 --> 00:21:28.299 form of praise. It's the harmony of heaven. And 00:21:28.299 --> 00:21:30.799 by silencing her nuns, they were the ones doing 00:21:30.799 --> 00:21:33.079 the devil's work. She completely flipped the 00:21:33.079 --> 00:21:35.359 script on them. She warned them that God would 00:21:35.359 --> 00:21:37.920 judge them for silencing his praise. And eventually, 00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:40.740 after months of this, they blinked. The interdict 00:21:40.740 --> 00:21:44.019 was lifted in March 1179. She died six months 00:21:44.019 --> 00:21:46.940 later. She won her final fight. Speaking of the 00:21:46.940 --> 00:21:48.920 silence being torture, let's talk about the noise 00:21:48.920 --> 00:21:52.910 she made. Section 4. The composer. Because this 00:21:52.910 --> 00:21:55.609 is probably how most people know her today, even 00:21:55.609 --> 00:21:57.390 if they don't know they know her. She's the most 00:21:57.390 --> 00:22:00.230 recorded medieval composer in history, by a wide 00:22:00.230 --> 00:22:02.630 margin. If you type medieval music into Spotify, 00:22:03.009 --> 00:22:05.109 Hildegard is the first thing you see. What makes 00:22:05.109 --> 00:22:08.069 her music so distinctive? To my untrained ear, 00:22:08.349 --> 00:22:11.470 chant is chant. It's monks humming in unison. 00:22:11.670 --> 00:22:14.630 Standard Gregorian chant is very restrained. 00:22:14.670 --> 00:22:17.670 It's beautiful. but it's functional it moves 00:22:17.670 --> 00:22:20.990 in small steps up a note down a note it stays 00:22:20.990 --> 00:22:23.390 within a pretty narrow melodic range it's meant 00:22:23.390 --> 00:22:26.809 to be calming not exciting exactly hildegard's 00:22:26.809 --> 00:22:29.789 music which she collected in a cycle called symphonia 00:22:29.789 --> 00:22:33.130 is ecstatic it's emotional how so what does that 00:22:33.130 --> 00:22:35.950 sound like the range first of all her melodies 00:22:35.950 --> 00:22:38.230 swoop from the very bottom of the register to 00:22:38.230 --> 00:22:41.009 the very top sometimes over two octaves it's 00:22:41.009 --> 00:22:43.410 incredibly athletic and demanding for the singers 00:22:43.410 --> 00:22:46.559 and it's melismatic Define melismatic for us. 00:22:46.839 --> 00:22:49.339 So syllabic singing is one note per syllable. 00:22:49.619 --> 00:22:52.859 Think twinkle, twinkle little star. Melismatic 00:22:52.859 --> 00:22:55.279 singing is when you take one vowel like the O 00:22:55.279 --> 00:22:58.859 in Gloria and you sing 30, 40, 50 notes on that 00:22:58.859 --> 00:23:00.880 one single sound. So it's like a jazz run or 00:23:00.880 --> 00:23:03.319 a diva moment in a pop song. That's a great modern 00:23:03.319 --> 00:23:05.920 analogy. It creates this feeling of timelessness, 00:23:05.980 --> 00:23:08.420 of floating, of divine inspiration just pouring 00:23:08.420 --> 00:23:11.519 out. It's meant to induce a trance state, to 00:23:11.519 --> 00:23:13.400 lift you out of the ordinary. And she wrote the 00:23:13.400 --> 00:23:15.680 lyrics to the poetry. Yes, and the lyrics are 00:23:15.680 --> 00:23:17.980 just incredible. Feather on the breath of God, 00:23:18.240 --> 00:23:21.099 the blood of the rose that blossoms in the thorn. 00:23:21.160 --> 00:23:25.079 It's rich, sensory, almost psychedelic imagery. 00:23:25.339 --> 00:23:27.819 She also wrote what is arguably the first opera, 00:23:28.059 --> 00:23:31.279 the Ordo Virtutum. The play of the virtues. It's 00:23:31.279 --> 00:23:33.539 a musical drama, a morality play. That's the 00:23:33.539 --> 00:23:36.339 plot. It's an allegory. The main character is 00:23:36.339 --> 00:23:39.089 Anima the soul. She is struggling. She is tempted 00:23:39.089 --> 00:23:41.569 by the world but wants to reach heaven. She is 00:23:41.569 --> 00:23:44.170 surrounded by the virtues personified as women 00:23:44.170 --> 00:23:48.190 like humility, charity, chastity, and she is 00:23:48.190 --> 00:23:50.390 stalked by the devil. And there is a fascinating 00:23:50.390 --> 00:23:52.910 theological detail in how the music works in 00:23:52.910 --> 00:23:54.769 this play. This is one of those things that just 00:23:54.769 --> 00:23:57.670 makes you go, whoa. This is my favorite aha moment 00:23:57.670 --> 00:24:00.210 in all of Hildegard's work. In the play, the 00:24:00.210 --> 00:24:03.670 soul sings, the virtues sing in beautiful, harmonious 00:24:03.670 --> 00:24:07.039 planchon, but the devil. He does not sing. You 00:24:07.039 --> 00:24:09.420 can't carry a tune. Is that it? He is incapable 00:24:09.420 --> 00:24:12.339 of music. In the manuscript, his lines are written 00:24:12.339 --> 00:24:14.660 without any musical notation. The instructions 00:24:14.660 --> 00:24:17.380 say he must shout, grunt, or speak discordantly. 00:24:17.559 --> 00:24:20.559 Why? What's the theology there? Because for Hildegard, 00:24:20.660 --> 00:24:23.430 music is divine harmony. it is the order of the 00:24:23.430 --> 00:24:26.609 cosmos it is the echo of god's voice from before 00:24:26.609 --> 00:24:29.930 the fall the devil is the spirit of discord of 00:24:29.930 --> 00:24:33.130 chaos of separation by rebelling against god 00:24:33.130 --> 00:24:36.009 he lost the ability to harmonize he is purely 00:24:36.009 --> 00:24:39.829 noise that is profound to be evil is to be unmusical 00:24:39.829 --> 00:24:43.950 to be without harmony exactly and practically 00:24:43.950 --> 00:24:45.549 it must have been quite a scene in the convent 00:24:45.549 --> 00:24:47.970 you have the nuns dressed in beautiful robes 00:24:47.970 --> 00:24:50.250 singing like angels and then volmar the poor 00:24:50.250 --> 00:24:52.109 monk playing the devil just stand standing there 00:24:52.109 --> 00:24:54.130 shouting and grunting at them. It brings the 00:24:54.130 --> 00:24:56.549 theology to life in a way a sermon never could. 00:24:57.049 --> 00:24:59.190 But Hildegard wasn't just concerned with the 00:24:59.190 --> 00:25:01.589 soul's harmony. She was concerned with the body's 00:25:01.589 --> 00:25:04.869 harmony, too. Which takes us to Section 5, The 00:25:04.869 --> 00:25:07.150 Scientist and Healer. This is the side of her 00:25:07.150 --> 00:25:09.049 that gets you into the health food store. She 00:25:09.049 --> 00:25:12.230 wrote two major scientific texts, Physica, which 00:25:12.230 --> 00:25:14.930 is a book of natural history, and Causae Cure, 00:25:15.049 --> 00:25:18.750 or Causes and Cures. Where did she learn medicine? 00:25:18.849 --> 00:25:21.869 Was she reading Galen and the Greek texts? She 00:25:21.869 --> 00:25:24.410 read some Latin texts, sure. She was well -read. 00:25:24.690 --> 00:25:26.970 But mostly she learned in the garden and the 00:25:26.970 --> 00:25:29.690 infirmary. Monasteries were the hospitals of 00:25:29.690 --> 00:25:32.410 the Middle Ages. The nuns grew the herbs. They 00:25:32.410 --> 00:25:34.450 treated the sick locals who came to the door. 00:25:35.069 --> 00:25:37.430 Hildegard was a practitioner. She had dirt under 00:25:37.430 --> 00:25:39.970 her fingernails. And there's a central concept 00:25:39.970 --> 00:25:43.870 here that ties everything together for her. Viriditas. 00:25:43.870 --> 00:25:46.410 Viriditas. It's one of her favorite words. It's 00:25:46.410 --> 00:25:48.650 a Latin term that is really hard to translate 00:25:48.650 --> 00:25:52.109 perfectly. It means greenness, greening power, 00:25:52.430 --> 00:25:56.269 vitality. It sounds like virility mixed with 00:25:56.269 --> 00:25:59.609 verdant. That's exactly the root. To Hildegard, 00:25:59.670 --> 00:26:01.890 viriditas is the life force that comes from God. 00:26:01.990 --> 00:26:03.990 It flows through nature, making plants green 00:26:03.990 --> 00:26:06.430 and moist and alive, and it flows through humans. 00:26:06.769 --> 00:26:08.849 If you are healthy, you are green and moist. 00:26:09.069 --> 00:26:11.930 If you are sick or sinful or melancholic, you 00:26:11.930 --> 00:26:14.569 are dried out. You are withered. So health is 00:26:14.569 --> 00:26:16.569 essentially a kind of spiritual hydration and 00:26:16.569 --> 00:26:19.230 photosynthesis. In a spiritual sense, yes. She 00:26:19.230 --> 00:26:21.069 saw a direct link between the health of the soul 00:26:21.069 --> 00:26:23.450 and the health of the body. Sin dries you out. 00:26:23.630 --> 00:26:26.069 Grace makes you green again. She categorized 00:26:26.069 --> 00:26:30.039 everything. Plants, stones, animals. And she 00:26:30.039 --> 00:26:32.119 had some specific theories. She used the humoral 00:26:32.119 --> 00:26:33.859 theory, right? That was the standard model. That 00:26:33.859 --> 00:26:36.059 was the standard science of the day. The body 00:26:36.059 --> 00:26:39.740 has four humors. Blood, phlegm, yellow bile, 00:26:39.859 --> 00:26:42.619 black bile. Sickness is caused by an imbalance. 00:26:42.839 --> 00:26:45.380 You need to keep them balanced. Hildegard accepted 00:26:45.380 --> 00:26:48.250 this. But she gave it a biblical twist. Of course 00:26:48.250 --> 00:26:50.170 she did. Everything gets a biblical twist. She 00:26:50.170 --> 00:26:52.069 said that Adam and Eve were perfectly balanced 00:26:52.069 --> 00:26:55.029 in Eden. They had healthy bodily fluids. But 00:26:55.029 --> 00:26:57.730 the fall of man threw the humors out of whack. 00:26:57.970 --> 00:27:00.650 It turned those healthy fluids into poisonous 00:27:00.650 --> 00:27:03.890 phlegmata. So disease is literally a result of 00:27:03.890 --> 00:27:06.130 original sin. But she also had some surprisingly 00:27:06.130 --> 00:27:09.339 practical cures. let's talk about beer this is 00:27:09.339 --> 00:27:11.500 her claim to fame in the brewing world she is 00:27:11.500 --> 00:27:13.700 credited with the first written reference to 00:27:13.700 --> 00:27:16.380 using hops in beer as a preservative before that 00:27:16.380 --> 00:27:18.539 what was in beer a mixture of herbs called groot 00:27:19.119 --> 00:27:21.420 But it spoiled quickly. Hildegard noted that 00:27:21.420 --> 00:27:23.759 the bitterness of hops stopped putrefaction. 00:27:23.920 --> 00:27:26.640 It made the beer last longer. So in a way, she 00:27:26.640 --> 00:27:29.299 helped invent the IPA. I've seen Hildegard, patron 00:27:29.299 --> 00:27:31.920 saint of craft breweries. I love it. She also 00:27:31.920 --> 00:27:34.759 recommended boiling river water before drinking 00:27:34.759 --> 00:27:37.079 it. She didn't know about bacteria, obviously. 00:27:37.359 --> 00:27:41.259 She had no concept of germ theory. But she observed 00:27:41.259 --> 00:27:44.460 that people who drank raw water got sick, and 00:27:44.460 --> 00:27:47.250 people who drank boiled water... didn't that 00:27:47.250 --> 00:27:50.589 simple observation probably saved thousands of 00:27:50.589 --> 00:27:53.230 lives in her care but not all her advice was 00:27:53.230 --> 00:27:56.230 great by modern standards she was big on bloodletting 00:27:56.230 --> 00:27:58.769 oh yeah Bloodletting was the aspirin of the Middle 00:27:58.769 --> 00:28:01.750 Ages. Everyone did it for everything. But Hildegard, 00:28:01.829 --> 00:28:04.750 being Hildegard, was meticulous about it. She 00:28:04.750 --> 00:28:06.950 said you have to look at the moon phases. You 00:28:06.950 --> 00:28:09.390 should only bleed during a waning moon when the 00:28:09.390 --> 00:28:11.869 humors are less agitated. And she had a very 00:28:11.869 --> 00:28:14.549 specific unit of measurement for how much blood 00:28:14.549 --> 00:28:16.250 to take. This one grossed me out when I first 00:28:16.250 --> 00:28:18.470 read it. Me too. She said to take the amount 00:28:18.470 --> 00:28:21.369 that a thirsty person can swallow in one gulp. 00:28:21.849 --> 00:28:24.809 That is such a visceral, horrifying unit of measurement. 00:28:24.910 --> 00:28:27.490 But also, you know exactly what she means. It 00:28:27.490 --> 00:28:30.009 is. But it's practical. It's brilliant in its 00:28:30.009 --> 00:28:32.329 own way. Everyone knows what a gulp looks like. 00:28:32.349 --> 00:28:34.230 It's better than saying 50 milliliters when you 00:28:34.230 --> 00:28:37.109 don't have a beaker. It's folk science. It shows 00:28:37.109 --> 00:28:39.029 her mind at work. She's trying to standardize 00:28:39.029 --> 00:28:41.650 medicine. She's trying to find order in chaos. 00:28:42.349 --> 00:28:45.609 Which brings us to section six, the linguist. 00:28:46.170 --> 00:28:49.009 Because apparently, writing theology, composing 00:28:49.009 --> 00:28:51.730 music, running two convents, or curing the sick 00:28:51.730 --> 00:28:54.730 wasn't enough. She had to invent a language. 00:28:55.130 --> 00:28:57.930 The lingua ignota, the unknown language. Why? 00:28:58.009 --> 00:29:00.869 Just why? What was the point? That is the million 00:29:00.869 --> 00:29:02.769 -dollar question that scholars are still arguing 00:29:02.769 --> 00:29:05.269 about. We have a glossary of about a thousand 00:29:05.269 --> 00:29:09.009 words she invented, and an alphabet of 23 strange 00:29:09.009 --> 00:29:12.029 -looking letters called literae ignotae. Give 00:29:12.029 --> 00:29:13.769 us some examples. What does it sound like? God 00:29:13.769 --> 00:29:21.130 is Agon's. It sounds a bit like a mashup of Latin 00:29:21.130 --> 00:29:23.309 and German with a lot of Zs thrown in. It has 00:29:23.309 --> 00:29:25.369 a phone aesthetic quality. It sounds mysterious 00:29:25.369 --> 00:29:27.869 and ancient. But the purpose is debated. Theory 00:29:27.869 --> 00:29:30.490 one, it was a secret code. Right. A way for the 00:29:30.490 --> 00:29:32.130 nuns to talk to each other without the monks 00:29:32.130 --> 00:29:34.430 or visitors understanding. A clubhouse language 00:29:34.430 --> 00:29:37.089 to build solidarity and a sense of special identity. 00:29:37.490 --> 00:29:39.829 Like Twinspeak, but for a whole convent. I can 00:29:39.829 --> 00:29:42.599 see that. Exactly. But theory too is deeper. 00:29:42.920 --> 00:29:45.380 Scholar Sarah Higley suggests it was a theological 00:29:45.380 --> 00:29:48.420 project. Hildegard believed the world was fallen. 00:29:48.720 --> 00:29:51.220 Maybe she believed human language was fallen 00:29:51.220 --> 00:29:54.819 too imprecise, dirty, corrupted. Maybe she was 00:29:54.819 --> 00:29:57.180 trying to create a pristine language, a language 00:29:57.180 --> 00:30:00.339 fit for angels, to describe divine things without 00:30:00.339 --> 00:30:03.259 the baggage of everyday Latin or German. So it 00:30:03.259 --> 00:30:05.740 wasn't just a game. It was an attempt to fix 00:30:05.740 --> 00:30:08.319 the Tower of Babel on a small scale. Possibly. 00:30:08.359 --> 00:30:11.079 Today, she's considered a pioneer of conlangs 00:30:11.079 --> 00:30:13.500 -constructed languages. She's the spiritual grandmother 00:30:13.500 --> 00:30:16.119 of J .R .R. Tolkien's Elvish and the Klingon 00:30:16.119 --> 00:30:18.299 language. She really did do everything. It's 00:30:18.299 --> 00:30:20.200 staggering. But we have to remember, beneath 00:30:20.200 --> 00:30:23.259 the genius, she was a human being. And Section 00:30:23.259 --> 00:30:25.880 7 brings us to the personal side, the emotional 00:30:25.880 --> 00:30:28.119 vulnerability. You can't talk about Hildegard 00:30:28.119 --> 00:30:29.799 without talking about Richard Esfand's state. 00:30:30.079 --> 00:30:32.380 Richards was the nun who helped her write Sivius. 00:30:32.880 --> 00:30:34.980 Her secretary. She was much younger, a noble 00:30:34.980 --> 00:30:37.440 woman. She was Hildegard's assistant, her secretary, 00:30:37.700 --> 00:30:40.000 her confidant, her protege. They worked side 00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:42.380 by side for 10 years. Hildegard called her the 00:30:42.380 --> 00:30:44.460 light of my eyes. But then politics intervened, 00:30:44.460 --> 00:30:47.920 as it always does. In 1151, Richardus' powerful 00:30:47.920 --> 00:30:50.819 family arranged a promotion for her. She was 00:30:50.819 --> 00:30:53.019 elected abbess of a different, more prestigious 00:30:53.019 --> 00:30:55.500 convent. It meant she had to leave Rupertsburg. 00:30:55.660 --> 00:30:57.720 And Hildegard did not handle this well. She had 00:30:57.720 --> 00:31:01.180 a meltdown. A complete and total meltdown. She 00:31:01.180 --> 00:31:03.599 wrote desperate letters. She wrote to Richardus' 00:31:03.660 --> 00:31:06.339 mother, begging her to intervene. She wrote to 00:31:06.339 --> 00:31:08.980 the Pope, claiming the move was not God's will. 00:31:09.220 --> 00:31:11.880 She used the God card again. But it sounds different 00:31:11.880 --> 00:31:14.339 this time. It does. It feels less like a prophet 00:31:14.339 --> 00:31:16.700 speaking from on high and more like a heartbroken 00:31:16.700 --> 00:31:18.599 woman trying to keep her dearest friend from 00:31:18.599 --> 00:31:21.299 leaving. It feels intensely personal. Did it 00:31:21.299 --> 00:31:24.339 work? No. The Pope ordered Richardus to go to 00:31:24.339 --> 00:31:27.559 her new post. She left. And then... The tragedy. 00:31:27.980 --> 00:31:30.579 One year later, Richardus died suddenly. Oh, 00:31:30.660 --> 00:31:33.099 that is just gut -wrenching. After all that. 00:31:33.319 --> 00:31:35.579 It crushed Hildegard. We have a letter she wrote 00:31:35.579 --> 00:31:37.900 to Richardus' brother after her death. It is 00:31:37.900 --> 00:31:41.359 full of raw, unfiltered grief. She writes, I 00:31:41.359 --> 00:31:43.880 loved the nobility of her conduct, and I loved 00:31:43.880 --> 00:31:46.039 her. And this has led to some modern interpretation. 00:31:46.839 --> 00:31:48.880 Queer medieval scholars look at this relationship 00:31:48.880 --> 00:31:51.799 and see something significant. It is significant. 00:31:52.200 --> 00:31:54.680 Now, we have to be careful not to just slap a 00:31:54.680 --> 00:31:57.460 21st century label like lesbian on a 12th century 00:31:57.460 --> 00:32:00.339 nun. Identity and relationships worked very differently 00:32:00.339 --> 00:32:02.519 then. Of course. But the emotional intensity, 00:32:02.819 --> 00:32:05.799 the language of divine love she used, the physical 00:32:05.799 --> 00:32:08.740 distress at the separation, it clearly fits within 00:32:08.740 --> 00:32:11.480 a queer reading of history. Whether it was sexual 00:32:11.480 --> 00:32:14.500 or not is almost beside the point. It was a profound 00:32:14.500 --> 00:32:17.359 romantic same -sex bond that defined her emotional 00:32:17.359 --> 00:32:20.099 life. It humanizes her. She wasn't a stone statue 00:32:20.099 --> 00:32:23.299 of a saint. She loved deeply, and she lost deeply. 00:32:23.759 --> 00:32:25.640 There's also some discussion about her art in 00:32:25.640 --> 00:32:27.380 this context, right? Right. If you look at the 00:32:27.380 --> 00:32:29.720 Sivius Illuminations, particularly the way she 00:32:29.720 --> 00:32:32.640 depicts the side wound of Christ, well, it's 00:32:32.640 --> 00:32:35.160 a diamond shape. It's often red. To a modern 00:32:35.160 --> 00:32:37.240 eye, it looks very ionic. It looks like a vulva. 00:32:37.339 --> 00:32:40.000 Is that intentional? Or is that just us projecting 00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:42.400 modern sensibilities onto it? It's probably a 00:32:42.400 --> 00:32:45.309 bit of both. Formally, it's likely a mandorla 00:32:45.309 --> 00:32:48.029 in almond shape used in medieval art to signify 00:32:48.029 --> 00:32:51.269 holiness. But Hildegard's theology was radically 00:32:51.269 --> 00:32:53.730 feminine. She talked about God as a mother. She 00:32:53.730 --> 00:32:56.230 talked about the church as a bride. She saw the 00:32:56.230 --> 00:32:58.750 feminine as a source of divine creative power. 00:32:59.009 --> 00:33:02.690 So using imagery that evokes birth and life makes 00:33:02.690 --> 00:33:05.349 perfect sense in her theological system. It just 00:33:05.349 --> 00:33:07.650 adds another layer to her complexity. So we come 00:33:07.650 --> 00:33:11.529 to section eight, the legacy. She died in 1179. 00:33:12.259 --> 00:33:14.740 The Chronicles say two rainbows crossed in the 00:33:14.740 --> 00:33:17.000 sky when she took her last breath. A fitting 00:33:17.000 --> 00:33:19.740 end, don't you think? It really is. But she wasn't 00:33:19.740 --> 00:33:22.400 officially a saint for a long, long time. This 00:33:22.400 --> 00:33:25.579 is a classic case of Vatican red tape. The canonization 00:33:25.579 --> 00:33:28.039 process started almost immediately, but documents 00:33:28.039 --> 00:33:30.700 got lost, committees dragged their feet, the 00:33:30.700 --> 00:33:33.000 Reformation happened and threw everything into 00:33:33.000 --> 00:33:35.960 chaos. For centuries, she was a saint by popular 00:33:35.960 --> 00:33:37.920 tradition, but not on the official list. When 00:33:37.920 --> 00:33:40.890 did it finally happen? Not until May 2012. Pope 00:33:40.890 --> 00:33:43.690 Benedict VI finally used a process called equivalent 00:33:43.690 --> 00:33:46.150 canonization to basically say, look, everyone 00:33:46.150 --> 00:33:48.329 has treated her as a saint for 800 years. Let's 00:33:48.329 --> 00:33:50.250 just make it official. And then he gave her an 00:33:50.250 --> 00:33:53.549 even rarer title a few months later, Doctor of 00:33:53.549 --> 00:33:56.309 the Church. That is a huge deal. There are only 00:33:56.309 --> 00:33:59.150 about 37 doctors of the church in all of history. 00:33:59.710 --> 00:34:02.509 You're talking Augustine, Aquinas, Teresa of 00:34:02.509 --> 00:34:04.990 Avila. It means your teachings are considered 00:34:04.990 --> 00:34:07.950 universally important and orthodox. It's the 00:34:07.950 --> 00:34:10.730 hall of fame of theology. For a woman who called 00:34:10.730 --> 00:34:14.349 herself unlearned, that is the ultimate vindication. 00:34:14.489 --> 00:34:16.829 Absolutely. But her legacy isn't just in the 00:34:16.829 --> 00:34:18.730 church. As you said earlier, it's in the club. 00:34:18.909 --> 00:34:21.210 This is my favorite part of the story, the pop 00:34:21.210 --> 00:34:24.070 culture revival. It started in the 80s and 90s 00:34:24.070 --> 00:34:26.929 with the chant craze, but then electronic artists 00:34:26.929 --> 00:34:30.070 found her. The British band Orbital sampled her 00:34:30.070 --> 00:34:32.829 track O Eucharist for their classic ambient song 00:34:32.829 --> 00:34:35.269 Belfast. I listened to that track this morning. 00:34:35.309 --> 00:34:38.170 It works so well. It works perfectly. Her music 00:34:38.170 --> 00:34:40.789 is floating, timeless, unmoored from a strict 00:34:40.789 --> 00:34:43.710 rhythm. It fits ambient techno like a glove. 00:34:43.949 --> 00:34:46.610 The artist Grime cites her as a major influence. 00:34:46.889 --> 00:34:49.809 The artist Lingua Ignota took her name from Hildegard's 00:34:49.809 --> 00:34:52.329 language. She is the patron saint of the avant 00:34:52.329 --> 00:34:54.989 -garde. And the New Age movement loves her. Oh, 00:34:55.030 --> 00:34:57.550 of course. The crystals, the herbs, the healing 00:34:57.550 --> 00:35:00.710 stones, the green power. She fits perfectly into 00:35:00.710 --> 00:35:03.070 the holistic wellness trend. And there's even 00:35:03.070 --> 00:35:04.909 a reincarnation theory. You have to tell me about 00:35:04.909 --> 00:35:07.090 this. Rudolf Steiner, the mystic philosopher. 00:35:07.329 --> 00:35:10.610 In 1924, he claimed that a Russian philosopher 00:35:10.610 --> 00:35:13.650 named Vladimir Soloviev was the reincarnation 00:35:13.650 --> 00:35:16.269 of a nun who fit Hildegard's description perfectly. 00:35:16.610 --> 00:35:19.150 Sure. Why not? At this point, she is everything 00:35:19.150 --> 00:35:21.750 to everyone. That's a thing. She is a mirror. 00:35:22.639 --> 00:35:25.880 Feminists see a feminist icon who broke the patriarchy. 00:35:26.260 --> 00:35:29.199 Catholics see a doctor of the church. Musicians 00:35:29.199 --> 00:35:32.780 see a compositional genius. Healers see a pioneer 00:35:32.780 --> 00:35:35.860 of holistic medicine. She's big enough to hold 00:35:35.860 --> 00:35:38.900 all of it. So let's wrap this up. We've covered 00:35:38.900 --> 00:35:41.320 the mystic, the politician, the artist, the scientist. 00:35:41.639 --> 00:35:44.539 What is the final takeaway? What is the thread 00:35:44.539 --> 00:35:47.670 that ties the 12th century to the 21st? For me, 00:35:47.690 --> 00:35:49.989 the keyword is connection. Hildegard didn't believe 00:35:49.989 --> 00:35:52.309 in boxes. She didn't see music and medicine and 00:35:52.309 --> 00:35:54.909 theology and botany as separate subjects. She 00:35:54.909 --> 00:35:56.710 saw them as different languages for describing 00:35:56.710 --> 00:36:00.130 the same divine truth. The cosmic egg. It all 00:36:00.130 --> 00:36:02.980 fits together. Exactly. The mathematical interval 00:36:02.980 --> 00:36:05.760 in a song is the orbital mechanics of the stars, 00:36:05.800 --> 00:36:08.239 is the balance of humors in the blood. It's all 00:36:08.239 --> 00:36:11.619 one interconnected web. We live in an age of 00:36:11.619 --> 00:36:14.659 hyper -specialization. You are a biologist or 00:36:14.659 --> 00:36:17.400 a poet. You're a data scientist or a musician. 00:36:18.719 --> 00:36:21.280 Hildegard challenges us to see the whole picture. 00:36:21.519 --> 00:36:24.320 And that concept of viriditas, that greening 00:36:24.320 --> 00:36:27.550 power. feels incredibly urgent right now, doesn't 00:36:27.550 --> 00:36:29.889 it? We are facing a climate crisis. We are facing 00:36:29.889 --> 00:36:33.210 epidemic levels of burnout. The idea that we 00:36:33.210 --> 00:36:36.150 need to tend to the garden, both the planet and 00:36:36.150 --> 00:36:39.030 our own bodies and souls, is a powerful message. 00:36:39.349 --> 00:36:41.449 She believed the world and the body were a garden 00:36:41.449 --> 00:36:43.570 that needed tending. If she were alive today, 00:36:43.670 --> 00:36:45.289 I don't think she'd be locked away in a convent. 00:36:45.349 --> 00:36:47.349 I think she'd be a climate scientist, a protester, 00:36:47.409 --> 00:36:49.349 and an experimental musician all at once. And 00:36:49.349 --> 00:36:51.809 she'd probably be sending very angry, prophetically 00:36:51.809 --> 00:36:54.309 worded emails to world leaders. Oh, absolutely. 00:36:54.570 --> 00:36:56.809 She'd be in their DMs telling them they are madmen 00:36:56.809 --> 00:36:58.469 if they don't fix the climate. And honestly, 00:36:58.650 --> 00:37:00.809 knowing her track record, they might just listen. 00:37:00.989 --> 00:37:05.030 That is Hildegard of Bingen, a medieval powerhouse 00:37:05.030 --> 00:37:08.230 who is somehow 800 years later still ahead of 00:37:08.230 --> 00:37:10.420 her time. Thank you for listening to this deep 00:37:10.420 --> 00:37:12.780 dive. Go listen to some of her music, maybe the 00:37:12.780 --> 00:37:15.119 remix, maybe the original drink and IPA in her 00:37:15.119 --> 00:37:18.300 honor, and find your own greening power. Sticky 00:37:18.300 --> 00:37:19.119 Curious. See you next time.