Today I discovered polymath, the non-gender term for “Renaissance man” in the context of an amazing woman who died September 17, 1179–two centuries before the Renaissance period began.
Hildegard von Bingen, also known as Saint Hildegard and Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess born in 1089. She wrote theological, botanical and medicinal texts, liturgical songs, and poems, including Ordo Virtutum which may be the the oldest surviving morality play, and she supervised the creation of beautiful miniature illuminations.
Viriditas, my second new word, was key to Hildegard’s understanding of the world, internally as well as externally. Wikkipedia explains the term as follows: “Viriditas (Latin, literally ‘greenness,’ formerly translated as ‘viridity’1]) is a word meaning vitality, fecundity, lushness, verdure, or growth..” In Hildegard’s writings viriditas has a double meaning; it is necessary to cherish the physical world on which life depends,and it is necessary to foster the life-renewing “greening” of the Holy Spirit in the Christian’s life.
To see Saint Hildegard’s Tree of Life illumination and to read or hear a poem about her written by English poet Malcolm Guite, visit http://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/hildegard-of-bingen-a-sonnet/
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