Hildegard of Bingen

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most remarkable figures of the Middle Ages, Hildegard of Bingen. The abbess of a Benedictine convent, Hildegard experienced a series of mystical visions which she documented in her writings. She was an influential person in the religious world and much of her extensive correspondence with popes, monarchs and other important figures survives. Hildegard was also celebrated for her wide-ranging scholarship, which as well as theology covered the natural world, science and medicine. Officially recognised as a saint by the Catholic Church in 2012, Hildegard is also one of the earliest known composers. Since their rediscovery in recent decades her compositions have been widely recorded and performed.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Miri Rubin 12 episodes
  Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History and Head of the School of History at Queen Mary, University of London
• William Flynn No other episodes
  Lecturer in Medieval Latin at the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds
• Almut Suerbaum No other episodes
  Professor of Medieval German and Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford

Reading list

• Rhetoric Beyond Words: Delight and Persuasion in the Arts of the Middle Ages
  Mary Carruthers (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2013) Google Books →
• A History of Women's Writing in Germany, Austria and Switzerland
  Jo Catling (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2000) Google Books →
• Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages: New Departures in Poetry, 1000-1150
  Peter Dronke (Oxford University Press, 1970) Google Books →
• Hildegard of Bingen: A Visionary Life
  Sabina Flanagan (Routledge, 1998) Google Books →
• The Life of the Holy Hildegard
  Gottfried and Theodoric (eds. Mary Palmquist and John Kulas) (Liturgical Press, 1980)
• Crown and Veil: Female Monasticism from the Fifth to the Fifteenth Century
  Jeffrey Hamburger and Susan Marti (eds.) (Columbia Press, 2008) Google Books →
• Secrets of God: Writings of Hildegard of Bingen
  Hildegard (trans. Sabina Flanagan) (Shambhala Publications, 1996) Google Books →
• Symphonia
  Hildegard (trans. Barbara Newman) (Cornell University Press, 1998) Google Books →
• Jutta and Hildegard: The Biographical Sources
  Hildegard (trans. Anna Silvas) (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999)
• A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen
  Beverly Kienzle, Debra Stoudt and George Ferzoco (eds.) (Brill, 2013)
• Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age
  Fiona Maddocks (Faber & Faber, 2013) Google Books →
• Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and Her World
  Barbara Newman (ed.) (University of California Press, 1998) Google Books →
• Conversations with Angels: Essays Towards a History of Spiritual Communication, 1100-1700
  Joad Raymond (ed.) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b047c312

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b047c312

Auto-category: 780.92 (Biographies of composers)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, if you'd walked into the Abbey of the Monastery Trier in Germany 850 years ago, it's quite possible that this is what you would have heard.