This publication owes its genesis to the opening of the Hildegard von Bingen Pilgrimage Trail, which took place on September 9, 2017. The pilgrimage trail, an initiative funded by the European Union, covers a length of almost 140 km, starting in Idar-Oberstein and ending in the St. Hildegard Abbey in Eibingen. The beginning in Idar-Oberstein is related to the fact that the place is a well-known center of gemstone mining, and in the work of Hildegard of Bingen, gems play an important role. In addition, in the immediate vicinity is the village of Niederhosenbach, which is considered one of three possible birthplaces of Hildegard, along with Bermersheim and Böckelheim Castle. The end point in Eibingen offers the opportunity to visit the mighty Abbey of St. Hildegard and the parish church of the village, where Hildegard’s relics are kept.
The goal of the pilgrimage path is to make the most important stations of Hildegard of Bingen’s life on the Rhine and Nahe accessible and comprehensible in a spiritually accentuated manner. The accompanying pilgrimage book reflects the pilgrimage in structure and content and deepens its concern through thematically oriented impulses on the life and work of Hildegard. It can be used to prepare, accompany, or follow up the pilgrimage. In addition to the spiritual intentions, the book also fulfills purely profane functions, for example, in the sense of a hiking guide through an ancient cultural landscape on the Rhine and Nahe, or as a guide to retrace an extended nature experience. The tourist aspects that are alluded to here fit without resistance into the dominant spiritual and scientific concept of the book.
A total of 59 panels placed at various stations along the pilgrimage route provide thematically broad explanations of Hildegard of Bingen’s biography, historical environment, and writings. The texts of the panels are also printed in the pilgrimage book. It concerns 32 information and 27 meditation impulses, which introduce the visionary’s far-reaching work kaleidoscopically. The 32 information texts are written by ten specialists in Hildegard research. Topics include the most important stations of Hildegard’s life as well as her visionary, medical and botanical writings. In the case of Hildegard’s medicinal and natural history works, a hint could have been conveyed that this part of Hildegard’s work is the least secured in terms of the history of transmission. The oldest preserved manuscripts of Hildegard’s natural and medical writings were recorded only about 100 years after her death. But this is no objection to the always high scientific quality of the publication. It is very welcome that the pilgrimage path also offers sound samples from Hildegard’s compositional work. With the 77 chants of the Symphonia and the Ordo virtutum, Hildegard has left the most extensive musical work from the Middle Ages that can be connected with the name of a composer. At the same time, the Ordo virtutum forms the oldest spiritual virtue play of the Middle Ages.
The 27 meditation texts of the pilgrimage book refer to the author’s image and the following 26 thematic visions of Hildegard’s first visionary writing, theScivias. Explanatory remarks are also found on the Liber vitae meritorum and the Liber divinorum operum, Hildegard’s second and third visionary writings.
The Hildegard pilgrimage route is divided into ten daily stages, most of which are 10 to 15 km long and last 4 to 5 hours. The pilgrimage book has the same structure. Following a quasi-biographical Hildegard topography, the area of Hildegard’s birth, her places of activity in the county of Sponheim, the monasteries Disibodenberg and Rupertsberg as well as the present Hildegard monastery in Rüdesheim/Eibingen are walked. It must be taken into account from the pilgrims’ point of view that today, only a landscape of ruins of the Disibodenberg Monastery can be seen, and of Rupertsberg Monastery, apart from a cellar vault, nothing at all remains. Notwithstanding this, the places mentioned have in the meantime acquired a “mystical” significance in addition to their real ones.
The corresponding chapters of the book follow a uniform structure. It is composed of three parts. In the first part, basic information about the respective day’s route is given. Maps and images describe the route and indicate the course, length and highlights of each day’s stage. A related interactive element asks the pilgrim about his or her motivation for going on pilgrimage or explores his or her ideological horizons. This interactive part (“Pilgrim’s Question”) could also be described as a spiritual diary (“Diarium”) of the pilgrimage, in which the pilgrims can record the denotations of their very personal encounter with Hildegard. In a second section, under the heading “Meditation and Information,” basic facts from Hildegard’s life and work are discussed. For example, Hildegard’s view of creation and the Fall of Man, her concept of the soul, her image of the Church, her statements about fauna and flora, or her advice on the Treatment of diseases. The third and final part is entitled “Texts of the Day.” With one exception, all of the texts collected here were penned by Annette Esser. Their purpose is to present a number of overarching aspects of Hildegard’s life and work. Mentioned are Hildegard’s visionary gift, her concept of green power (“viriditas”), her life in the monastery Disibodenberg, her revelation of the “Liber Scivias” or her foundation of the monastery Rupertsberg. The last “text of the day” was written by Sister Philippa Rath OSB, a member of the Abbey of St. Hildegard in Eibingen. It presents the history of the abbey from its presumed founding by Hildegard (1165) to the destruction of Rupertsberg Abbey (1632) in the course of the 30 Years War, the move of the Rupertsberg nuns to Eibingen Abbey (1642) and the dissolution of Eibingen Abbey in the course of secularization (1803). Finally, there is a look at the new construction of the present monastery building (1900/1904) and the election of Mother Dorothea Flandera as abbess (October 3, 2016). It has not yet been possible to take into account the election of Mother Katharina Drouvé as the new Abbess of Eibingen Monastery (March 4, 2023). The foundation of Eibingen Monastery by Hildegard of Bingen, which has occasionally been called into doubt in recent literature, also requires further scientific clarification.
In its successful combination of factual and spiritual topics, the Hildegard Pilgrimage Book forms a kind of spiritual “vade mecum” to the Hildegard Way, but also as an introduction to Hildegard’s work in general. Hildegard of Bingen, who was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 and elevated to the status of Doctor Ecclesiae Universalis, is creatively portrayed in Annette Esser’s pilgrimage book as an important universal figure of the European Middle Ages, whose impact remains unbroken to this day. Whether the reader of the book wants to emphasize the spiritual dimensions, the factual content, or the touristic aspects is up to him or her.
The form of “ambulant” knowledge transfer chosen for the Hildegard Pilgrimage Book refers expressis verbis to the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. For centuries it has been one of the most important pilgrimages of Christianity and at the same time a cultural transfer axis of hardly overestimable importance. Especially for Hildegard’s work, in which the aspect of the “viatoric” (that which is on the way) plays such a central role, this approach proves to be of great consistency and effectiveness.
After the German version of the pilgrim’s guide has already seen two editions (2017/19), now with the American edition an international version is available, which one can only wish the same success as the German. The meritorious publication closes a painfully felt gap in the field of Hildegard literature and expands the spectrum of this literature by an extraordinarily stimulating and valuable variant.