Name: EPISTOLAE - Hildegard von Bingen & her letters
Start: 2025-04-07T20:00:00+02:00
End: 2025-04-07T21:30:00+02:00
Location: KoncertKirken

EPISTOLAE - Hildegard von Bingen & her letters
Pamela Petsch - voice
Susanne Ansorg - fiddle
Poul Høxbro - recitation
Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) was one of the most important women in the Middle Ages. She maintained a lively correspondence with numerous clerical and secular dignitaries of the Holy Roman Empire. For a long time, these letters - 390 in all - were regarded as an unearthed treasure. Only recent research has brought to light the wide network of friendships and relationships that the abbess and founder of the monasteries of Rupertsberg and Eibingen cultivated with countless personalities of her time. The letters show her influence on important political and socio-critical issues of the 12th century, but also her deeply felt friendships. Our programme follows the correspondences and reveals a woman who is still relevant almost a thousand years after her life. With this programme, we create a new view of Hildegard von Bingen beyond visions and spelt biscuits. Who were Hildegard's pen pals? For example, Bernard of Clairvaux, to whom she turned because she was unsure whether to write down her visions. Who would believe her, a woman, a nun? Finally, she received permission from Pope Eugene III to write down her visions; he even read out part of the Liber Scivias at the synod in Trier, which delighted Hildegard. Then she even dared to criticise Emperor Frederick II Barbarossa in personal letters. On the other hand, Barbarossa also enabled her to achieve financial independence for her monasteries. He raised her monasteries to the rank of imperial monasteries, which not only guaranteed her tax exemption, but also elevated her to the rank of imperial princess as imperial abbess. She was now one of the few women who could represent her political interests at the Imperial Diet and also claim the right of minting and customs. Hildegard was initially taken with the determined and energetic young emperor and paid homage to him in her letters. The choice of music for our programme follows the themes Hildegard raises in her letters: invocation of wisdom, criticism of arrogance, hymns of praise to St. Rupertus and Disibod, contrition and pleas for help. She also quotes from her own songs in the letters. We have integrated some of them into our programme.
THE READINGS
In the first reading you will hear part of the correspondence between Hildegard of Bingen and her famous and influential contemporary Bernard of Clairvaux. However, he is evasive about requests to acknowledge her visions and writings. She was more successful with Pope Eugene, who recognised her visions and allowed her to publish her writings. The second reading to her nuns in Rupersberg also contains some of the songs in our concert programme, such as the following "Hodie aperuit". An unvoiced song is read. The second half of this reading is about the nun Elisabeth von Schönau, who lived in a neighbouring Benedite monastery. Hildegard writes here to Elisabeth, who has asked her for advice because she had visions that confused her very much. Hildegard therefore asked her to help her. Among other things, it is about the visions of St. Ursula. As a result, Hildegard wrote a Divine Office for St. Ursula and her companions. In the letter to her nuns in Rupertsberg, an unvoiced song of hers is recited, which we will improvise in the epilogue. The last reading is a letter to Abbot Kuno von Disibodenberg. All her life Hildegard was at odds with the abbot. Since her childhood Hildegard had lived in this male monastery as a cloistered nun. When she then became independent with two monasteries, the lifelong dispute began. Among other things, it was about money that she was entitled to and that he did not want to pay her. Here, however, this letter is about a suicide whom Hildegard had buried in her churchyard against the will of the bishop. The abbot punished the whole nunnery with a silentio - i.e. the nuns were not allowed to sing at mass or in the Liturgy of the Hours. A harsh punishment for Hildegard in her old age. Shortly after the punishment was lifted, she died.
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