Hildegard of Bingen – the early years – E-Bike-Tour

About the E-Bike-Tour

Our tour first lets us discover the impressive landscape around the Disibodenberg and then leads to that exposed hill where “The Saint of the Mountain” developed into one of the most unusual female figures of the Middle Ages. In addition, a guided tour of the monastery opens up a wonderfully romantic park with its very own, almost mystical atmosphere to interested visitors. We learn how Hildegard of Bingen lived with her mentor and where she gave advice and support to the pilgrims of her time.

A journey back in time to the world of the early Middle Ages, when women could only find their destiny in the family or in faith. You can’t get any closer to the personality of Saint Hildegard!

Background

At the Trier Synod of 1147/48, Hildegard of Bingen was the first woman in church history to be recognised by the Pope as a seer. As early as 1112 she moved to the monastery on the Disibodenberg on the Glan. Thirty years later, she would have her visions, which had become famous, recorded here by a scribe monk.

What exactly did the holy woman experience in her secluded hermitage? And how did she become the most famous female figure of the Middle Ages, whose former place of activity is hardly known?

It all began with a myth on a small mountain. The Irish-Scottish wandering monk Disibod founded a monastery where three orders would find their home…

Why did Hildegard of Bingen have the gift of sight? Who opened her eyes so that she could compile books like “Know the Ways”, “Origin and Treatment of Diseases” or also “Healing Creation – the Natural Effective Power of Things”? Perhaps it was the teacher Jutta of Sponheim (1092-1136), only six years her senior, who presided over the other nuns as magistra. And from whom she possibly learned to read and write and to sing the Psalter and the Bible.

When Jutta of Sponheim died, she had already expressed her wish to choose Hildegard as her successor as “magistra”, master of the women’s convent. In 1139, Hildegard of Bingen was elected Magistra by the nuns. In 1151, 15 years later, she stepped out of her mentor’s shadow and founded something of her own: the Rupertsberg Monastery in Bingen on the Rhine.

Source: Franz Stab, Sponheim – Hefte, No. 21