--- title: Saint Hildegard von Bingen — A New Gift Center description: "The life, visions, and art of Saint Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179): Benedictine abbess, mystic, composer, healer, and Doctor of the Church — and the ordered, greening vision behind A New Gift." image: https://dashing-cucurucho-c6c83d.netlify.app/social-preview.png --- [A NEW GIFT A New Gift Centerfor Catholic Philanthropy and Nonprofit Excellence](https://www.anewgiftcenter.com/?hsLang=en) [← Back to the Center](https://www.anewgiftcenter.com/?hsLang=en) The Order Behind the Center # Saint Hildegard *von Bingen* 1098 – 1179 · Doctor of the Church Benedictine abbess, mystic, composer, healer, and theologian — the “Sibyl of the Rhine,” whose vision of a cosmos ordered around God gives A New Gift its shape. ## A life, *rightly ordered.* Born in 1098 in the Rhineland, Hildegard was entrusted as a child to the care of the anchoress **Jutta of Spanheim** at the monastery of Disibodenberg. She was formed from her earliest years in the Benedictine rhythm of prayer, work, and study. When Jutta died, the community chose Hildegard as their leader. From her earliest years she experienced what she called the **“reflection of the Living Light”** — luminous visions she received fully awake, with her senses intact. For decades she told almost no one. Only at **about forty**, after a command she understood as coming from God to record what she had seen, did she begin — with the encouragement of her confessor **Volmar** and, eventually, the approval of **Pope Eugenius III** (1147) and **Saint Bernard of Clairvaux**. ## The visions & *Scivias.* Her first and greatest visionary work, ***Scivias*** (“Know the Ways”), was begun in 1141 and took about ten years to complete; in Pope Benedict XVI’s summation, it gathers **thirty-five visions** of salvation history — creation, redemption, and the Church. She went on to write two more visionary books, *Liber Vitae Meritorum* and *Liber Divinorum Operum*, alongside works on medicine, natural science, and the lives of the saints. What unites them is a single picture: **a universe held in concentric order**, everything alive and interdependent, everything turning around God at the center. It is this picture — one center, all things ordered in relation to it — that A New Gift takes as its own. ## *Viriditas* — the greening power. A theme widely drawn from Hildegard’s writings is ***viriditas*** — the “greenness” or freshness of life, often described as the vitality of the Holy Spirit running through all created things like sap through a branch. To be in right order with God is to be *green* — fruitful, growing, alive. To be cut off is to dry up. For a center built around generosity, this is the heart of the matter. Giving, leadership, and service are not duties squeezed from a dry root; they are fruit that overflows naturally when a life is rooted in its source. Seek first the Kingdom, and the greening follows. ## Music, healing, and a *public voice.* Hildegard composed hymns, antiphons, and songs gathered under the title *Symphonia Harmoniae Caelestium Revelationum*, and wrote *Ordo Virtutum*, a morality play for which she provided both words and music. She practiced and wrote on medicine and the healing properties of the natural world. In her later years she undertook journeys to preach to the people of God — remarkable for a woman of her age — and corresponded fearlessly with popes, emperors, abbots, and kings. She founded her own monastery at Rupertsberg, and later a second at Eibingen, leading her sisters in independence from the monks of Disibodenberg — a quiet act of well-ordered courage. ## Saint & *Doctor of the Church.* Hildegard died on 17 September 1179. Venerated as a saint for centuries, **Pope Benedict XVI on 7 October 2012 proclaimed her a Doctor of the Church**, alongside Saint John of Ávila. Her feast is kept on 17 September. Her Illuminations ## The art of an *ordered cosmos.* Hildegard's visions were recorded as luminous, mandala-like illuminations — concentric, ordered, alive with *viriditas*, the greening power. All four below are her own work, in the public domain. ![Medieval illumination of Hildegard von Bingen receiving the Living Light as tongues of fire, recording her vision on tablets while her secretary Volmar looks on](https://dashing-cucurucho-c6c83d.netlify.app/hildegard-portrait.jpg) The Living Light Rupertsberg Scivias · c. 1151 Hildegard receives her vision as tongues of fire and records it on wax tablets, while her secretary Volmar witnesses — the opening image of *Scivias*. ![Hildegard's vision of the cosmic human figure within concentric rings of fire and air, held by the divine, from the Liber Divinorum Operum](https://dashing-cucurucho-c6c83d.netlify.app/hildegard-cosmichuman.jpg) The Cosmic Wheel Liber Divinorum Operum · Lucca codex The human person at the center of concentric heavens, held within the divine, rays radiating outward. Its likeness to the A New Gift sunburst is a quiet grace. ![Hildegard's vision of the nine orders of heavenly spirits, concentric rings of angels surrounding the divine light at the center](https://dashing-cucurucho-c6c83d.netlify.app/hildegard-nineorders.jpg) The Nine Orders Scivias · Book 1, Vision 6 The nine orders of heavenly spirits arranged in concentric rings around the divine source — the celestial hierarchy as rightly ordered worship. ![Hildegard's vision of the cosmos as concentric spheres with the four elements held in divine order](https://dashing-cucurucho-c6c83d.netlify.app/hildegard-cosmicsphere.jpg) The Cosmic Sphere Liber Divinorum Operum · Lucca codex The cosmos pictured as concentric spheres — fire, air, water, earth — held in the divine ordering, alive with *viriditas*. All four are Hildegard’s own illuminations — facsimiles of the *Rupertsberg Scivias* (Book 1, Visions where the angelic and visionary scenes appear) and the *Lucca* codex of the *Liber Divinorum Operum* — in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 1098 Born in the Rhineland 35 Visions in *Scivias* 2012 Canonized & named Doctor of the Church Sept 17 Her feast day Back to the Work ## One center, *four works.* Hildegard's ordered, greening vision is the shape of A New Gift — a spiritual retreat center at the heart, four works gathered around it. [See how it fits together](https://www.anewgiftcenter.com/#mandala) A New Gift Center © 2026 A New Gift Center · All rights reserved.