Hildegard Von Bingen

Around 1170, the German abbess, mystic and composer Hildegard von Bingen embarked on her final journey to recount her visions. At this point, Hildegard entrusted her spiritual insights not only to written words, but also to painted images, wherein her divine wisdom flows through form, color, sound, numbers and the movement of the stars. The result was her final manuscript, the Book of Divine Works, completed in 1173. The Fountain of Wisdom compiles these late painted images, uniting original format reproductions of the two Bingen codices with new images, never seen before, that have been hidden within the miniatures.
Divided into three sections, the volume charts the process through which Hildegard received and articulated her divine images. The first section addresses the emission of visions through the cosmos, the sphere of creation, to the sphere of the soul; the second elucidates Hildegard's process of writing and composing these obscured images; the third demonstrates how the mystic employed sapiential code to construct her illustrations through the arts of quadrivium, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy.
Born to a noble family, Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179) became a Benedictine novice as a teenager. Her holy visions, which she had experienced since the age of three, were first collected and published in the Scivias (1141–52). As well as preaching throughout Germany, she wrote on music, poetry, natural history and her own prophecies, which survive in the form of dazzling illuminated manuscripts.

Between 1142 and 1174, the German mystic, composer and writer Hildegard von Bingen created three visionary books: Scivias (Know the Ways); Liber Vitae Meritorum (Book of the Rewards of Life); and Liber Divinorum Operum(Book of Divine Works). This latter work—reproduced in this sumptuous new volume—consists of a sequence of ten scenes that invites human beings to climb the road of virginitas toward the recomposition of their own selves in union with the divine caritas.
The refined miniatures in the Lucca manuscript—reproduced here with a simple key explaining their symbolic significance—were produced about 20 years after Hildegard’s death and provide a masterful illustration of the architecture of her vision. The dialogue with the images from her first work, Scivias (published in Skira’s Hildegard von Bingen: A Journey into the Images) casts light on the unifying design that connects them.
Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179) was a German Benedictine nun and polymath. She is renowned as a composer of sacred monophonic music, as well as for her three volumes of visionary theology: Scivias, the Liber Vitae Meritorum and the Liber Divinorum Operum. In recent decades, her music has proved immensely popular with performers of medieval music. In 2012, she was named a Doctor of the Church, one of only four women with that distinction in the Catholic church.

Before Hilma af Klint and Emma Kunz, there was Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179)—the German abbess, composer, writer, artist and mystic, who until now was probably best known, in the English-speaking world, for her music and her writings. Von Bingen completed her first visionary work of art around 1152: Scivias, taken from the Latin phrase Sci vias Domini, or “Know the Ways of the Lord.” Describing 26 of Hildegard’s religious visions in text and a series of 35 miniature illustrations, this series narrates the journey of the humanity in Eve’s womb, represented as bright stars, as it joins with the stars in the sky: a possibility offered to each soul, to return back to the Light.

In obedience to the voice of God, von Bingen wrote down her visions in a precious manuscript, with images added to make the story come alive. This volume brings Hildegard's visionary text, in all its dense symbolism and prophetic sweep, alive to contemporary readers.

At the core of the book are the manuscript’s 35 miniatures, reproduced at their original size alongside an accompanying key. Each element of the images—colors, frames, forms, numbers—was precisely chosen and leads deeper into the meaning of the work; the key decodes these symbols in each image and concisely describes each vision. A text by musician and scholar Sara Salvadori crosses the entire work, highlighting these interlinking details and revealing Hildegard’s dense, unified design. This volume presents Hildegard von Bingen’s endlessly compelling prophetic text in all its inspired beauty.