Cosmos and Church: Reawakening Our Ecclesial Imaginations with St. Hildegard of Bingen
Medievalist Barbara Newman has characterized the Benedictine Abbess Hildegard of Bingen as “a perfect embodiment of the integrated, holistic approach to God and humanity for which our fragmented era longs.”[1] Pope Benedict XVI similarly observed in Hildegard “a wonderful harmony between teaching and daily life” when he declared her a Doctor of the Church.[2] This harmony especially resounds in her expansive corpus, which Newman describes as uniting “vision with doctrine, religion with science, charismatic jubilation with prophetic indignation, and the longing for social order with the question for social justice in ways that continue to challenge and inspire.”[3]
Only a glance at Hildegard’s extensive list of accomplishments is needed to confirm these characterizations. The Medieval polymath founded two monasteries, went on multiple preaching tours, and wrote musical compositions, theological treatises, the first documented morality play, works on science and natural medicine, and even a secret language that some scholars believe was used to foster solidarity in her Order.[4] Hildegard was renowned for her prophetic insight, which was sought out by her contemporaries, ranging from the women under her care to political and religious leaders. Newman sketches Hildegard’s distinctive personality, vividly:
Her sheer force of will, combined with a dazzling array of spiritual and intellectual gifts, a courage hardened by decades of struggle, and a prophetic person, which she displayed in season and out, made her a formidable opponent; and she did not take defeat easily.[5]
Hildegard placed this vivacity at the service of the twelfth-century Church beset with clerical corruption. It was out of her love for the Church that she advocated for its renewal and internal reform.
The papally endorsed Scivias (short for the Latin phrase Sci vias Domini, meaning “Know the Ways of the Lord”) was a fruit of this love. Scivias is a theological summa, which features twenty-six of Hildegard’s doctrine-inspired visions. In it, she draws on scriptural exegesis, Patristic authors, and contemporary science to show how the history and destiny of creation hinge upon the Incarnation. The illuminated work includes paintings of the visions, designed by the visionary herself and her community. In the preface to Scivias, Caroline Walker Bynum offers the preparatory insight that readers will find in the diverse array of Hildegard’s elaborate visions: that they are being shown the whole “structure of salvation” by the saint herself (5).
Scivias challenges many commonly accepted notions of the Church today, including those that render her primarily (if not purely) in functional terms. In such conceptions, the Church works as an automated “it”: a dispenser of grace via the sacraments—a means to an end for individuals to secure their spots in heaven. This narrowly individualistic vision of the Church can induce a kind of blindness to that profession of early Christians: “the world was created for the sake of the Church” (CCC §760).[6] No one remains alienated in the Church, but discovers, in her sacramental life, that they are made for communion with humankind and with the whole of creation in Christ.
Hildegard can help us see creation anew in light of this communitarian vision of the Church. The otherworldliness of her visions and the richness of her theological analysis can help make strange the all-too familiar Church for us today, and reawaken us to aspects of her identity that we have forgotten. We will sketch only three of Hildegard’s (many) visions of the Church presented in Scivias, to see how the saint artistically and theologically delineates the Church’s understanding of herself.
The Cosmos and the Church
We will begin with an aerial view: Hildegard’s sacramental map of the universe in the first book of Scivias. In this famous vision, Hildegard sees the universe in the form of an egg that is alive and bustling with the movements of the divine life, against those of the devil (1.3). Through Hildegard’s creative depiction of the relationships between the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, the winds, and the stars, she illumines the ecclesial orientation of creation as an interconnected whole.[7]
In this map, we (humanity) find ourselves in the yolk-like earth, at the center of the unfolding drama of the salvation of the universe.[8] Our home is enshelled with heavenly fires of divine power, from which winds blow, rushing into earth divine truth which “spreads with words of justice, which truly demonstrate to humanity the same living and true God” (Scivias, 1.3.8). God makes himself knowable through his creation.
The Sun of the universe is Christ, who lights it up with flames of charity. Reflecting his light of charity to humankind is the unconquered Church (symbolized by the Moon), which “shines most serene faith, with no uncertainty or infidelity hiding in it, since it is not founded by itself but dependent upon Christ” (1.3.11). Through the Church, Christ reveals to earthly humanity “heavenly things, so that, glorifying Him by serving Him, they reject all harmful error, and magnify Him” (1.3.4). In turn, the Church as Moon pours out the light of humanity’s “splendid works of piety” into the ether, adorning the with stars which, according to Fassler, represent saints (1.3.12). The Church then marvels at the stars—“at the brightness of the works done by the perfected through others” (1.3.12).
In and through the Church’s mediation of Christ’s light, the elements of creation are revealed to be “created for Man’s service” and thus “wait on him” to receive Christ’s light into their lives (1.3.16). For Hildegard, the physical world is not indifferent to our response to the Incarnation, but actually orders us toward becoming bearers of Christ. Though our grasp of cosmology is different today than it was in the twelfth century, to say the least, Hildegard inspires meditation upon creation (which includes human life) in light of its purpose to receive the light of Christ.
The Church as Bride
Precisely how the Church produces saints is considered further in subsequent visions. In the second book of Scivias, the Church is depicted by Hildegard in her most essential form: as the faithful Bride standing beside her Bridegroom, Christ crucified on the cross, to whom the Bride was joined “by the will of the Heavenly Father,” “in happy betrothal and nobly dowered with His body and blood” (2.6). The vision is imbued with Eucharistic meaning: the Bride holds up a cup to Christ, which she uses to catch the blood flowing from his side. In part of the painting accompanying the vision, the two are encompassed by a dark blue, starry sky, which indicates, as Fassler notes, that this intimate moment between Bride and Bridegroom exists eternally.[9]
When the faithful receive the Bridegroom in the Eucharist, they stand at his side, as the happy, adoring Bride in Hildegard’s vision, who receives her identity from the blood springing from Christ’s body. A body that was wounded mercifully for her sake. His Eucharistic love is what defines his Bride, the Church. She, then, is to become an extension of this mercy to humankind, as a voice from Heaven, speaking to the Son of God, proclaims: “May she, O Son, be our Bride for the restoration of My people; may she be a mother to them, regenerating souls through the salvation of the Spirit and water” (2.6).
The Church as Sorrowful Mother
This leads us to our final vision of the Church from Hildegard. In the third vision of the second book of Scivias, Hildegard sees the Church as a woman, as large as a city, without legs or feet (as she herself is still in the process of being made perfect), who is balanced on her womb, which is open before the altar of God (2.3). She is perpetually pregnant, laboring forth and offering up souls to God. Her womb is described by Hildegard as pierced like a fishing net that draws in humankind. Through her womb, the woman reunites human persons with God through Baptism and “expels unbelief and expands belief” in her children, who come out of her free of sin (2.3.1).
Mother Church, however, knows that she will conceive and bear many who oppress her “by heretical, schematic, and useless battles, by robberies and murders, by adultery and fornication, and by many such errors” (2.3). While she loves her children with the “deepest love,” “feeling their pain in the depths of her viscera,” she laments their return to sin (2.3.15). We will only note two things about this otherworldly vision.
First, we can notice how the Church is depicted as a maternal personification of the City of God, who is wholly distinct from her children. Her purpose, “which she devoutly keeps to in the heavenly places, can be obscured by no wickedness” even of those who are baptized in her (2.3.7). Their sins will not, in the end, overcome or corrupt her.[10] Yet, secondly, the Church is not unaffected by her children’s sins, but oppressed by them.[11] She experiences pain for those who sin and welcomes back those who are penitent.[12] While her gaze remains fixed upon heaven, she, as Hildegard sees it, remains physically open to all of humanity, despite the pain this will bring her.
It can be tempting today, in an effort to separate oneself from sin and corruption, to understand the Church as a closed fortress that doles out grace only to the deserving. Hildegard, however, shows us that the life of discipleship is perpetually open to others. We, as children of the Church, are called to be like Mother Church, who is merciful to all, including those who oppress her. It is this perpetually available mercy, which has its source in the Eucharist, that brings about the unity of the Church, and so too, the end of creation.
Conclusion
With these three ecclesial images we have reflected upon, Hildegard has shown us the Church as a kind of sacrament of Divine Mercy, which brings the universe to its end, through her mediation of Christ to humanity and her production of saints; which as Bride, remains forever united to her Bridegroom, and, as Mother, unites each of us creatures to our Creator. This Divine Mercy mediated and embodied by the unconquered Church was not an abstraction for Hildegard, but was practiced in her life as a saint. At the end of her life, Hildegard endured excommunication, which forbade her community from participating in the Mass, receiving the Eucharist, and singing the Office. As Joseph Baird notes, this would have been an especially painful affliction for Hildegard, the poet and liturgical composer.[13]
The excommunication was the result of the burial of a nobleman, once excommunicated, on the consecrated grounds of Hildegard’s monastery. The prelates imposing the sanctions did not know that the nobleman had been reconciled to the Church by the time of his death and thus, demanded his body be moved—stubbornly ignoring Hildegard’s testament to the man’s reconciliation. She could have consented to their demands to avoid the prohibitions altogether. But she knew the man had been absolved and so, out of fidelity to Christ and his mercy to penitent sinners, Hildegard refused the demands and maintained that the man died in a state of grace, obediently accepting the consequences until a friend (an archbishop) intervened.[14]
Despite the upset this ordeal brought to her life, Hildegard remained faithful to the mercy of God. That mercy which has its source in the wounded, bleeding side of Christ, which is the lifeblood of the Church and indeed, that of every saint. That mercy which binds each of our lives together into one, making each of us and so too, the whole world, into a harmonious creation which sings praise to God.
EDITORIAL NOTE: Support for this essay was provided by the Sullivan Family Saints Initiative and the Global Catholic Research Initiative, both at the University of Notre Dame.
[1] Barbara J. Newman, “Introduction” in Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans. Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (Paulist Press, 1990), 10.
[2] Pope Benedict XVI, Apostolic letter proclaiming Hildegard of Bingen as a doctor of the church (October 7, 2012), §1.
[3] Barbara J. Newman, “Introduction,” in Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, 10.
[4] Barbara J. Newman, “Introduction,” in Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, 13.
[5] Barbara J. Newman, “Introduction,” in Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, 15. As an example, Newman recounts Hildegard’s condemnation of the emperor, with whom she previously had been on excellent terms. Her critique of him had been provoked by his continued schismatic support of antipopes. The fact of his loyalty to Hildegard did not stop her from “calling her imperial patron a madman” (16).
[6] Margot Fassler also notes the influence of the Shepherd of Hermas (the source of the quoted Catechism text) on the themes and ideas central to Scivias, in Chapter 6 of , Liturgy, and the Arts in the Twelfth Century: Hildegard’s Illuminated “Scivias” 1st ed. (University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc, 2022), 165.
[7] In this section, I draw on Margot Fassler’s reading of Scivias in Chapter 5 of , Liturgy, and the Arts in the Twelfth Century, 128-157, in addition to Hildegard’s own interpretation of her vision.
[8] Margot Fassler, , Liturgy, and the Arts in the Twelfth Century, 140.
[9] Margot Fassler, , Liturgy, and the Arts in the Twelfth Century, 151.
[10] Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, 2.3.1, 170; 2.3.12, 173.
[11] For an extended reflection on a similar text of Hildegard’s, in light of the state of the Church today, see this extended reflection, originally presented by Sr. Theresa Aletheia at Notre Dame for the “True Genius: The Mission of Women in Church and Culture” conference in March 2025.
[12] Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, 2.3.14, 174; 2.3.15, 175. For examples of how the Church sacramentally offers struggling, penitent sinners the healing mercy of Christ, see also 2.6.82, 281; 2.6.88, 283.
[13] Baird, Joseph L. (ed.), “XII The Last, Bitter Controversy,” in Joseph L. Baird (ed.), The Personal Correspondence of Hildegard of Bingenv (New York, 2006; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Sept. 2006).
[14] It is notable to mention, too, that this event elicited from Hildegard a rich theological defense of the centrality and necessity of music in salvation history and in the liturgy, in her letter to the Prelates.
