Illumination of choirs of angels, from Hildegard’s Scivias (“Know the Ways”), her three-volume work of visionary theology.
Song to the Creator (O Verbum Patris)
St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)
(Translated by Barbara Newman)
You, all-accomplishing
Word of the Father
are the light of primordial
daybreak over the spheres.
You, the foreknowing
mind of divinity,
foresaw all your works
as you willed them,
your prescience hidden
in the heart of your power,
your power like a wheel around the world,
whose circling never began
and never slides to an end.
Poem and images are in the public domain.
About St. Hildegard of Bingen
St. Hildegard of Bingen was the abbess of a German Benedictine convent and an extraordinarily accomplished woman. Hildegard experienced a series of mystical visions that she documented, and she also studied and wrote about biology, botany and medicine. She was a talented poet and music composer as well, and a prolific letter-writer. Many people, including popes and kings, sought her out for spiritual and political advice. Hildegard died in 1179 at the ripe old age of 81, and left behind a treasure-trove of illuminated manuscripts, scholarly writings and songs. Pope Benedict XVI canonized her in the spring of 2012, and a few months later declared her a Doctor of the Church.
