Hildegard of Bingen
Scientist, Composer, Healer, and Saint
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- € 8,99
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- € 8,99
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Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was one of the most remarkable and influential women of her time. Blessed with an astonishing array of talents, she was at once a mystic, theologian, scientist, doctor, nutritionist, composer, writer, linguist, and artist. Born to a noble family in Mainz, Germany, Hildegard entered a Benedictine monastery and went on to become abbess of a thriving community near Bingen. From a young age she received extraordinary “lights” or visions of Heaven, which she described in a book called Know the Ways (of God). Hildegard’s collection of imaginative music and poetry includes seventy-seven songs for the liturgical year and a morality play, making her the most prolific composer of early music in Europe. Her pioneering scientific work formed the basis for the study of natural history in Germany, while her holistic medical studies helped to provide cures for numerous diseases. Hildegard was also the author of a cookbook recommending nutritional “foods of joy” and she even invented a new language! Such was Hildegard’s fame and influence that bishops, popes, and kings, as well as humble peasants, sought out her wise counsel. Today, Hildegard of Bingen is recognized as a saint and doctor by the Catholic Church and is also revered by many Lutherans and other Protestants. Find out more about her life in this beautifully illustrated book by award-winning author, Demi.
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Demi tells the luminous story of St. Hildegard of Bingen who, as a child, "saw lights, and inside those lights were pictures of Heaven" and could tell the future. Cloistered due to terrible headaches, Hildegard becomes a nun at 18, and her visions persist until she hears the voice of God beseeching her to "let your inside lights shine out." In response, she writes about the world she sees in her mind's eye as well as works about natural history, medicine, and cookery. Her gifts to the world, including an invented alphabet and language, are also creative in nature: "So great was Hildegard's secret land of lights, so energetic, so brilliant, and so full of ideas, that Hildegard was able to compose seventy-seven symphonic songs and an operatic morality play." Demi illustrates this passionate tribute in her characteristic art style, blending spare, open space; inky figurinelike forms; and ornate celestial accents. Ages 4 8.
