Hildegard of Bingen and Jesus on Living a Green Life

Underlying Hildegard’s manifold interests lay political savvy; she negotiated enough power and support from the Pope and the German emperor to pursue her prophetic vocation. She preached to clergy and laity in a time when women did not preach in public. She procured enough trust from the archbishop to start her own independent community of nuns. Hildegard was a fruitful artist, a visionary woman, a prophetess of greenness.

There’s a concept in particular that ebbs and flows throughout Hildegard’s writings: greenness, or, in Latin, viriditas. The word comes from the Latin virido, to make green or to grow green. Hildegard uses this word so much and in such a wide-ranging way that translators don’t know what to do with it. Sometimes they translate it as “green,” but also as freshness, vitality, fecundity, fruitfulness, and growth. And really, it sums up the essence of Hildegard’s theology, because for Hildegard, the whole universe is “green.” It’s alive, ecological, more of a verb than a noun. The whole universe is, as it were, pulsing with divine essence, sustained by Spirit’s evolving life-energy. God and the universe are greening.