The Woman Who Heard God Sing

A visionary woman. A hidden voice. A life that changed the spiritual imagination of the West.The Woman Who Heard God Sing tells the extraordinary true story of Hildegard of Bingen, the twelfth century abbess, composer, healer, preacher, theologian, and mystic whose voice still echoes across nearly nine hundred years.Born in the German Rhineland in 1098, Hildegard claimed from childhood that she saw a living light no one else could see. For decades she kept her visions almost entirely hidden, enclosed within the strict world of Benedictine religious life. Then, in middle age, she began to write.What followed was one of the most remarkable careers in medieval history.Hildegard wrote vast works of theology and cosmology. She composed music of haunting originality. She studied plants, stones, illness, the body, and the healing power of the natural world. She founded monasteries, advised rulers, challenged churchmen, and preached publicly at a time when women were expected to remain silent.This book follows Hildegard from her childhood at Bermersheim to the enclosed life of Disibodenberg, from the blazing visions of the Scivias to the battle for Rupertsberg, from her music and medicine to her final struggle with ecclesiastical authority.Inside you will discover:The hidden childhood visions that shaped Hildegard’s entire lifeThe spiritual and political world of twelfth century EuropeThe creation of the Scivias and Hildegard’s visionary theologyHer music, medicine, natural philosophy, and concept of viriditasHer relationships with popes, emperors, abbots, nuns, and patronsHer courage in founding religious communities under male oppositionThe reason her legacy still matters to theology, women’s history, music, and mysticismBoth intimate and sweeping, The Woman Who Heard God Sing restores Hildegard as more than a saintly symbol. She was a strategist, builder, artist, healer, thinker, and one of the most astonishing women of the Middle Ages.This is the story of a woman who was told to be silent, and sang anyway.