Homage to a Remarkable Green Saint

Today is the Feast Day of St. Hildegard of Bingen. She was one of the original advocates of a Green lifestyle, speaking of viriditas, the greening power of nature that flows throughout the Creation. It was a power experienced by all living beings but particularly those who exercised their own creative powers. 

 

Hildegard was abbess of a Benedictine monastery at Disibodenberg, a small hillside location not far from the Rhine River. It was the Rhine that was the superhighway for the movement of Celts above the Alps from Galatia on the far eastern end of the Celtic Crescent to the British Isles on the far western end. 

Along the Rhine, a number of those that Creation Spirituality’s prophetic voice, Matthew Fox, calls Rhineland mystics appeared in the middle ages. They included Hildegard, Meister Eckhart in nearby Ehrfurt, Mechtilda in nearby Magdenburg, and Francis of Assisi at the bottom of the Rhineland crescent. 

Disibodenberg had been founded by Celtic missioners in the 7^th CE when Irish/Scottish monastics led by St. Disibod were reclaiming post-Roman Europe for the Christian faith. While the original mission had fallen into ruins, the Benedictines rebuilt it and by the 12^th CE when Hildegard arrived, there were separate quarters for both women and men on the site. Today it is ruins but remains a part of the Hildegard Trail, a route connecting the several sites near Bingen, where Hildegard eventually relocated, marked by trail signs bearing the logo of a nun in habit. 

What is remarkable about the site is the incredible power of nature that is on display there. Surrounded by hillsides golden with grain and orderly rows of vines in Germany’s Rhineland vineyards, the sheer greenness of the place is almost overwhelming. One can easily see what inspired Hildegard’s homage to Greening, the generative power of spirit she experienced here. 

Ruins of Convent Refectory, Disibodenberg

She would go on to found convents on both sides of the Rhine in the Bingen area. It is those convents that most of us associate with Hildegard. But the bulk of her work in detailing the plants of the region with their healing and nutritional power, the varying qualities of stones laid on the skin to heal aches and pains, her many artistic and literary descriptions of her visions of the Holy dictated to monks who rendered them to perpetuity, occurred mostly on site at Disibodenberg. 

Hildegard Centre, Bingen

Hildegard was probably the brightest mind in Europe at the time. She was an adept administrator of monastic houses, able to correct popes and live to tell about it - no small feat for anyone, especially a woman. But her encouragement to let the creative juices flow remains an inspiration to all of us this day. And her fierce, protective love of nature continues among the Green movements around the world today in small, still but determined voices like Greta Thunberg of Sweden. No doubt, the voice of Hildegard would be loud, sharp and urgent in these times when humanity stands on the edge of an anthropogenic extinction event. 

This day I am grateful for the life and ministry of a brilliant polymath from the Rhineland. And I am grateful to my friend in Frankfurt, Monica Mueller-Roemer, who offered to drive her car and spend a day of her life to accompany me on my pilgrimage to honor Hildegard. 

O most honored Greening Force,
You who roots in the Sun;
You who lights up, in shining serenity, within a wheel
that earthly excellence fails to comprehend.
You are enfolded
in the weaving of divine mysteries.
You redden like the dawn
and you burn: flame of the Sun.

—Hildegard von Bingen, Causae et Curae

 

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Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida

frharry@cfl.rr.com

hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? (Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures)

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

 © Harry Coverston 2019
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