Magistra Hildegard speaks to today

Michela Pereira, Hildegarda di Bingen: Maestra di sapienza nel suo tempo e oggi,
[Hildegard of Bingen. Teacher of Wisdom In Her Time And Today], Gabrielli

I was intrigued by Michela Pereira’s book Hildegarda di Bingen, [Hildegard of Bingen], written in 2017 and reprinted in 2024. Pereira is one of the foremost experts on this saint (1098-1179). The author’s feminist approach is fascinating, as is the way she presents Hildegard’s rich, fragmented, and complex human and spiritual experience in successive stages: the calling, the mission, the cosmic vision, the care of the human body, and the legacy. One of the strengths of the book is the first-ever Italian translation of some of Hildegard’s most significant letters, which she sent to her most important contemporaries or to nuns and monks who sought her advice. The author’s introduction to the volume is particularly interesting, where she states, “The magistra of the novices at Disibodenberg, the founder and abbess of Rupertsberg and Eibingen, was able to recognize transcendence within the female experience. She identifed something fundamental that patriarchal cultures ended up ignoring. This ‘something’ is that there exists a feminine aspect of the divine principle, which expresses itself in the created world, manifested in the radiant beauty of matter, enlivened by the spirit, and which is concealed within it and through it can be glimpsed”.