Before Rupertsberg

This chapter introduces composer Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), a polymath visionary who was the most prolific composer of plainchant and creator of the first musical “morality play.” It traces her enclosure at the Disibodenberg monastery with the pious Jutta of Sponheim at the age of twelve, her leadership of a community of Benedictine nuns, the startling vision that compelled her to begin documenting her visions when she was forty-two in her book Scivias, and interactions with her confessor Volmar, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and Pope Eugenius III. Another important vision instructed her to leave Disibodenberg with her nuns and create a new community at Rupertsberg, on the Rhine River across from Bingen.