HILDEGARD (1098-1179), commonly referred to as St Hildegard, abbess, “prophetess,” and a figure of some consequence in the history of mediaeval mysticism, was born of noble parents at Böckheleim in the countship of Sponheim, diocese of Mainz, in 1098 (or 1099), and from her eighth year was educated at the Benedictine cloister of Disiboden-berg (Mons Disibodi) in the principality of Zweibrücken, now in Rhenish Bavaria, where Jutta, sister of the count of Sponheim, was at that time abbess. From earliest childhood, we learn from Hildegard herself, she was accustomed to see visions which increased in frequency and vividness as she approached the age of womanhood; these, however, she for many years, though with great pain, kept almost wholly secret, nor was it until she had reached her forty-third year (1141) that she felt constrained at last to divulge them. Committed to writing by her intimate friend the monk Godefridus, they now form the first and most important of her printed works, entitled Scivias (probably an abbreviation for “sciens vias” or “nosce vias Domini ”) & Visionum et Revelationum Libri ITI. i and completed in 1151. In 1147 St Bernard of Clairvaux, having come to Bingen while engaged in preaching the new crusade throughout Germany, chanced to hear of Hildegard’s revelations, and on inquiry became so convinced of their reality that he not only wrote to her a letter cordially acknowledging her as a prophetess of God, but also successfully advocated her recognition as such by his friend and former pupil Pope Eugenius III. in the synod of Trêves (1148). In the same year Hildegard, who meanwhile had succeeded Jutta as abbess at Disibo-denberg, and had attracted overflowing numbers to that cloister, migrated along with eighteen of her nuns to a ...