The language of prophecy is frequently enigmatic, bewildering, and even disconcerting. Most of us are familiar with some of the cryptic messages of Nostradamus, Mother Shipton, Edgar Cayce, and other seers. Hildegard von Bingen is another in history’s long line of clairvoyants and prognosticators.

Born the tenth child of a knight, she was, according to custom, destined to devote her life to the Catholic Church. She entered the convent either as an older child or a young teenager at Disibodenberg, Germany. By the mid-12th century she was serving as the mother superior of the monastery she had founded at Rupertsberg on the banks of the Rhine River.

Hildegard’s Holy Visions and Abilities

At a very early age Saint Hildegard had begun experiencing regular holy visions that continued throughout her lifetime. In addition to being a nun with mystical and prophetic insights, she was a true pre-Renaissance polymath: political and social moralist, musical composer, poet, naturalist, herbalist, gemologist, author of medicinal and botanical texts, and playwright. She even penned the earliest morality play.