I first learned about Hildegard of Bingen (ca. 1098-1179) in a Washington Post article about beer. This twelfth-century abbes (leader) of a convent in Germany was the first person to document the use of hops in making beer.
I have come to find out she was no ordinary nun. She was unique among songwriters of her day for composing both the words and the music. There are more chants associated with her than any other songwriter of the Middle Ages. She played the ten-string psaltery (comparable to a dulcimer). She wrote sixty-nine musical compositions, plus the first-ever morality play complete with eighty-two songs. (The devil is the only one who doesn’t sing in Hildegard’s play. He only yells and grunts, since he cannot produce divine harmony.) She kept an herb garden and became a pioneer in holistic medicine. Her fellow nuns and residents of the wider community consulted her about using herbs and plants to combat illness. She conducted four preaching tours through Germany speaking primarily to male-dominated audiences denouncing clergy corruption and urging church reform. No wonder so many divergent groups claim Hildegard as their own.
“Holy persons draw to themselves all that is earthly,” Hildegard wrote. Jesus’s concern was not only with the hereafter. He summoned followers to promote human flourishing on earth by every means possible. Her prayer written in hymn fashion leads us to pray: