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Hildegard of bingen

In summer of the year 1098, in the German town of Bermersheim, a knight called Hildebert and his lady Mechthilde welcomed their tenth and last child, a daughter, whom they named Hildegard. The little girl was frail in health, but from early childhood she showed unusual spirituality. At the age of about five, as she would tell it much later, young Hildegard experienced a mystical vision of brilliant light, accompanied by images from Heaven. It was this combination of fragility and religious devotion, apparently that caused her parents to place Hildegard in a convent at the age of seven or eight. At the convent Hildegard was tutored in Latin, music, the scriptures, and religious studies. She took her vows as a nun when she was about eighteen. Little is known of her life for the next twenty years, until 1136. In that year Hildegard, at age thirty-eight, was elected abbess of the convent. Perhaps her new status gave Hildegard the courage to confide in others, to reveal the secret she had kept for so long - that she was subject to visions of God, Christ, the cosmos, biblical events, and religious symbols. In any case, she did so, and she was taken seriously. Encouraged by her churchly mentors, Hildegard began to write. Her first major work, started in 1142, was called Scivias, which translates from the Latin as Know the Ways (of the Lord). In this book, a ten-year project, Hildegard tells of her visions, describing them in exact detail and illustrating them with painted illuminations that are startingly modern in their simplicity. Some believe she made the paintings herself, but it is more likely they were done by others under her close supervision. For example, vision two is a portrait of Hildegard at the moment of her spiritual awakening. Seated in a small room, dressed in the robes of a courtly woman, Hildegard is struck by heavenly tongues of fire, which engulf her head. She is poised ready to record the event, as is her secretary, Volmar, standing awestruck at right. Symbolically, the spiritual flames will unloose Hildegard's own tongue, inspiring her to speak of God's ways. Mystical thought she may have been, Hildegard was no stranger to worldly concerns. She seems to have been an exceptionally good administrator, strong-willed and skillful at getting her own way. For long years her nuns had occupied the tiny women's quarters of a monastery, forced to endure domination and crowding by the monks. When she proposed to leave and establish a separate convent, she met bitter opposition from the men, who would thus lose the considerable wealth the nuns had brought to the community. Hildegard was undeterred. Taking care to enlist the protection of highly placed clergy and nobility, she departed with her nuns, about 1150, for a new convent site at Rupertsberg, near the town of Bingen. Hildegard's last decades were extremely productive. Several other books followed the Scivias, including a medical text and a nine-book tretise on botany, biology, geology, and astronomy. She wrote the music and text for some sixty-three hymns and also a miracle play, which was performed as an opera. All the while she maintained a vast correspondence, exchanging letters with monarchs and church leaders, scholars and ordinary people. In her last years she traveled rather widely, and she was called to preach in the great cathedrals. Her services were much in demand as an exorcist, capable of driving out evil spirits. Many contemporary accounts about Hildegard report her recurring, serious illnesses, but we do not know how she died. We have only the date. The extraordinary life of Hildegard of Bingen, spanning eighty-one years, came to an end on September 17, 1179.

Exercise 2: Get ready to write a reproduction.

Reproduction is a controlled composition in which the ideas are supplied and the student is to remember correct English ways of expressing them. The student should listen attentively to the text, read by the teacher or re­corded on the tape, and then write the gist of it using some words and expressions from the original either given by the teacher or memorized.

Before you start writing:

  1. Take your time and think about what you are going to say.

  2. Put your main ideas into words.

  3. Work out what order your ideas should be in.

  4. Put this plan on paper.

  5. Never start writing without a plan.

    1. Work out a writing plan for the text about Hildegard.

    2. Paraphrase the underlined passages. In dealing with them it will be worth your while to attend to these rules:

1. Read over the passage carefully two or three times to get a clear grasp of the meaning of the whole and the inter-relations of the parts. If need be, turn up any doubtful words in your dictionary, not so much to find equivalents as to make sure of the meaning of the passage.

2. Having made the matter your own, consider carefully in what form it can be most suitably expressed. Remember, that the general form may be completely changed. The only thing that must be preserved is the tone.

3. When the paraphrase has been written out, leave for a while, and then take it up and read it through apart from any consideration of the original, merely to see if it reads like English.

C. Use the following words and word combinations to build up short sentences on the subject of the text; learn the vocabulary by heart:

to show unusual spirituality; to experience a mystical vision; religious devotion; convent; to be tutored in Latin; to confide in smb.; to reveal a secret; to be subject to smth.; to be taken seriously; to describe smth. in exact detail; painted illuminations; to record smth.; to be no stranger to worldly concerns; monastery; nuns; monks; to be skillful at doing smth.; undeterred; to exchange letters with smb.; to preach; to be much in demand; to come to an end.

      1. Write a reproduction of the text (2 pages). Avoid looking into the original.

Exercise 3: Write at least two paragraphs to support the theses below (taken from the Introduction (Historical Background) to the text “The Middle Ages”). Think of a suitable beginning, middle and end for your sketch.

  1. The Middle Ages is a strange and mysterious time.

  2. Medieval people managed to meet their basic need for self-expression through art.

  3. The achievements of the time centered around the church and reflected its enormous influence.