The Unruly Mystic: Saint Hildegard

04/06/2026

At the Abbey of Saint Hildegard in Eibingen, the virtual pilgrimage turns to what may be Hildegard's most enduring gift — her music. Theologians Dr. Katherine Wrisley Shelby and Dr. Travis Stevens explore how her chants teach her entire cosmology in miniature. Sister Hiltrud from the Abbey speaks to pilgrims at the shrine. Rev. Dr. Shanon Sterringer opens with Hildegard's final vision of the Two Paths. Includes sung demonstrations of O Quam Mirabilis and O Frondens Virga, and an exploration of Hildegard's radical theology of feminine redemption — Mary as the reversal of Eve.
Read the full post and download our free Pilgrim's Guide →
https://www.sainthildegardway.eu/day-11-hildegards-music-theology-in-sound-at-the-abbey-of-eibingen/

03/06/2026

Heather Boyle walked the Hildegard Way in the summer of 2019 alongside Dr. Annette Esser, filmmaker Michael M. Conti, and a small international group of pilgrims and theologians. This is her account of what she found — a secret passageway through beech forests and vineyards where the natural world as Hildegard knew it is still in existence, and a living encounter with viriditas, the green force that animates everything she wrote. The trail is just over the hill from the modern world. You only need to walk towards it.
Read the full post and download our free Pilgrim's Guide → https://www.sainthildegardway.eu/stage-10-on-the-hildegard-way-a-modern-pilgrims-account/

02/06/2026

The Hildegard Way ends in Bingen — at the vaulted cellar of the Rupertsberg, all that remains of the monastery Hildegard founded in 1150, and across the Rhine at the pilgrimage church of Eibingen where her relics are kept. At age fifty-two, against the resistance of the Disibodenberg monks, she relocated nineteen sisters to an undeveloped hilltop and built a community of nearly fifty, with a scriptorium, a library, and running water piped to every room. She continued writing, composing, preaching, and advising until her death at eighty-one. Read the full post and download our free Pilgrim's Guide →
https://www.sainthildegardway.eu/stage-9-bingen-hildegard-founds-the-rupertsberg/

01/06/2026

The only building on the entire Hildegard Way that survives from Hildegard's own lifetime is a short walk from here. The tower of Burg Sponheim stands above the village — all that remains of the castle where Hildegard arrived at age eight to begin her education under Jutta of Sponheim. From Jutta she learned Latin. From Latin came everything else — the theology, the medicine, the music, the letters to emperors and popes. Hildegard would later write about Jutta with great care — acknowledging the relationship, protecting its complexity, honoring what she had received while quietly, firmly choosing a different path. Read the full post and download our free Pilgrim's Guide → https://www.sainthildegardway.eu/stage-6-burgsponheim-jutta-of-sponheim-hildegards-teacher/

01/06/2026

June is here 🥬🌳

🌟 The new month is here – JUNE. Let´s welcome the new month and see what Hildegard has to say about it. 🌠 She says the following:" This month the fruits are making progress and their ripening is already in the air. People born in this month receive their warmth from nature and, if developed properly, can bring it to full maturity. But he also has strong shoulders to take on any work, both physical and mental, and see it through to the end. The second sense, hearing and listening, is an important detail for him. And just as the famous cold weather in June can bring about a cooling down in nature, this person is also given a special strength of character, often through a sobering cooling down of their overzealous actions, a consistent ability to persevere, even in the most difficult and less advantageous undertakings." Do you have anyone being born in June around you? Does he/she fit the description? comment below the post please.

🌟nový mesiac jún sa začal a ja som o ňom zabudla napísať. Hneď to napravím. 🌟 Sv.Hildegarda píše o júni nasledovné: ....Tento mesiac plody napredujú a ich dozrievanie je už vo vzduchu. Ľudia narodení v tomto mesiaci dostávajú teplo z prírody a ak sa správne vyvinú, môžu ho priviesť k plnej zrelosti. Ale tento človek má tiež silné ramená, aby sa chopil akejkoľvek práce, fyzickej aj duševnej, a dotiahol ju až do konca. Druhý zmysel, sluch a počúvanie, je pre neho dôležitý detail. A tak, ako môže povestné chladné počasie v júni spôsobiť ochladenie v prírode, aj tomuto človeku je daná zvláštna sila charakteru, často až vytriezvením z príliš horlivých činov, dôsledná schopnosť vytrvať aj v tých najnáročnejších podmienkach." Máš niekoho vo svojom okolí, kto sa narodil v tomto mesiaci? sedí tento popis na tohto človeka? komentuj pod týmto postom..

31/05/2026

There is a word Hildegard von Bingen used that has no clean equivalent in modern English. Viriditas.
Usually translated as "greenness" — but that barely touches it. For Hildegard, viriditas was the living force that animates all of creation: the power of a seed to split stone, the vitality of a healthy body, the presence of the divine made visible in the natural world.
Walking the Hildegard Way in summer, you feel it before you can name it. In the beech forests. In the vineyards on the slopes above the Nahe. At Disibodenberg in the morning silence.
She had a word for what the landscape is doing. That word is still accurate.
We wrote a post about viriditas that goes deeper into what this concept meant across her theology, her medicine, and her music — and what it feels like to encounter it on the trail. Link below.
Read: Viriditas — The Green Force You Feel on the Hildegard Way → https://www.sainthildegardway.eu/viriditas-the-green-force-you-feel-on-the-hildegardweg/

30/05/2026

This is the place that stops every pilgrim. The ruins of Disibodenberg rise from a rocky spur above the confluence of the Glan and Nahe rivers. Ancient stone walls emerging from beech forest. Open to the sky. Moss-covered. Dense silence.
Hildegard lived here for forty years. She entered at fourteen and left at fifty-two. The writing of the Scivias, her first music, the death of her teacher Jutta, her election as magistra — all of it happened here, in a monastery that no longer stands. Standing in those ruins, you feel exactly why she found it so hard to leave. Read the full post and download our free Pilgrim's Guide → https://www.sainthildegardway.eu/stage-5-disibodenberg-forty-years-at-the-heart-of-the-hildegard-way/

29/05/2026

Behind the old Protestant church in Monzingen, there is a medicinal herb garden. Raised beds, labeled plants, the smell of earth and rosemary. This is where Hildegard speaks about her medical knowledge — and she is careful to say it came not from divine dictation alone, but from forty years of watching, listening, and learning.
She sat by the rivers. She worked in the hospice garden. She studied the ancient medical authorities. And she also, as she puts it, talked with plants. In Germany today she is considered the founder of a tradition of herbal and nutritional healing still practiced today. Read the full post and download our free Pilgrim's Guide → https://www.sainthildegardway.eu/stage-4-monzingen-hildegards-art-of-healing/

28/05/2026

She saw a great light at age three. She didn't speak of it publicly until she was forty-three. From the hilltop church of St. Johannisberg above the Nahe valley, Hildegard speaks about the visions she carried in silence for most of her life — and what happened when she finally could no longer hold them back. What she called the lux vivens — the living light — arrived with her eyes open, in full awareness, alongside the ordinary work of her day. Not ecstasy. Not trance. Instantaneous knowing. Read the full post and download our free Pilgrim's Guide → https://www.sainthildegardway.eu/stage-3-hochstetten-dhaun-hildegards-visions/

27/05/2026

The village of Niederhosenbach barely appears on most maps. Tucked into the hills above the Nahe valley, largely undisturbed — a cluster of farmhouses, a small church, an old oak in the churchyard. According to current historical research, this is where Hildegard was born in 1098, the tenth child of a noble family. As the tenth child, she was given to God before she could choose it. A human tithe, as she herself describes it. She would carry visions from the age of three — and keep them secret for forty years. Read the full post and download our free Pilgrim's Guide → https://www.sainthildegardway.eu/stage-2-niederhosenbach-hildegards-family-and-childhood/