Hildegard knew a lot about women’s medical needs as we can read in Minji Lee’s book, The Medieval Womb: Hildegard of Bingen’s Views on The Female Reproductive Body. More on that further down as I give Hildegard the last word, but first I delve into what’s happening now.
How far has women’s health developed since the medieval times of St. Hildegard?
Popular opinion says it’s still a work in progress. When my menopause issues started, there wasn’t much offered for relief. I was a bit lost even though I reached out to my medical doctors. Black cohosh was all I was given, which didn’t help much. At that time, there wasn’t a lot about it online, and since my mother never had symptoms, I had no example to follow. But there’s a growing movement to change that.
Many women are turning to functional doctors, naturopaths, using herbs, supplements, Hormone Replacement Therapy, and other options available to them as they deal with common issues with PMS and all the stages of menopause.
Good Information Found in Two 2026 Docuseries
I recently found two docuseries that explore the topic of women’s health, homones and healing. These are offered for general reference only and not as medical advice, nor as endorsements of any religious or political beliefs. If anyone knows of any Catholic docuseries on the topic, please let me know.
(Both of these are Amazon Affiliate links. I receive a small % from your purchase.)
Shealed Part 1: Becoming:
Shealed begins with a nine-year-old girl’s talk with her mom about the delicate topics of womanhood. It informs through science to replace silence within the family. It has helpful information for women of any age.
Balance: A Perimenopause Journey:
This docuseries follows two female monks asking lots of questions and seeking remedies for their perimenopause symptoms. It’s a thorough discussion on a topic that “affects every single woman in the world”.
Hildegard gets the last word.
A Hildegard-related resource is a book by Minji Lee, Assistant Professor of Religion and Medical Humanities at Montclair State University, New Jersey. She has a Ph.D. from Rice University. She wrote The Medieval Womb: Hildegard of Bingen’s Views on The Female Reproductive Body.
In it Lee writes, “While I was in graduate school, I suffered greatly with my menstruation.” So when she read an article on it by Marla N. Power in an anthropology of religion class, the result was impactful. She writes, “Power’s study profoundly influenced my desire to explore how women’s bodies have been interpreted throughout religious history.”
With her own experience with extreme menstrual symptoms, she can both relate to and relay her findings in this underserved topic.
She writes,
“I failed to recognize that my body was sending an important message that my lifestyle—insufficient sleep, no weekends, long hours in the graduate office, constant stress—was unsustainable. In Hildegardian terms, my body was manifesting symptoms of imbalance.”
While taking a semester away from her studies, she spoke with her mother’s devout Catholic friend, who was also a physician. She “offered not only medical treatment but also counselling and spiritual guidance”. And she offered a complementary spark to Lee’s research, which was just beginning with her reading of Hildegard’s Cause et cure and Scivias.
Here’s what drove her studies,
“What remained absolutely clear throughout my graduate studies was the consistent presence of women who supported me through various health issues…These women’s assistance helped me envision Hildegard’s era, when women necessarily supported one another in the absence of modern medicine.”
Lee says that Hildegard “transformed traditional ideas about women’s bodies” and went against the norms of that time.
Yet, she’s not trying to show Hildegard as a “proto-feminist” because Hildegard was still very traditional but not weak. She had a strong voice and was sought out by influential men and women of her day for her wisdom.
Even though she entered religious life as a child and remained celibate, she “showed sympathy to women who were wives and mothers, understanding their reproductive processes and functions.”
Hildegard believed that men and women were God’s creatures whose roles were meant to complement each other.
Hildegard disagreed with common thought about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It was not about Eve’s eating the forbidden fruit that foretold women to thereafter be “subjected to men” and punished with painful childbirth. For Hildegard, “it was more important for Adam that Eve was given to him by God.” Adam didn’t leave Eve.
There’s a hope that men will be patient with women through their medical struggles as well, with fluctuating hormones and womanly health issues.
Flowing Positivity
Contrary to other medieval writers, Lee writes that Hildegard
“uses these concepts of fluidity and porosity to explain women, especially their sexual and reproductive bodies…Her vision offers an alternative understanding: one where the porous female body becomes not a liability but a mirror of the cosmos and a channel of divine vitality.”
After years of studying Hildegard’s writings, Lee writes that Hildegard “transformed medieval views of women’s bodies from negative to positive.”
Lee says that Christian medieval belief was that women’s bodies were porous and permeable; “…the terms ‘porosity’ and ‘flow’ are central to analysing Hildegard’s depiction of women’s reproductive and spiritual bodies.”
Lee defines “flow” as not only referring to blood, humours and milk, but perhaps the move of the Holy Spirit, with “spiritual energy, grace and salvation through the female body.”
The greening power of viriditas
She names Hildegard as a game-changer in “the theological and medical understanding of the female body.” The key to it is “Hildegard’s distinctive understanding of this greening power” of viriditas.
For Hildegard, she states, viriditas is
“…the divine life-force manifest in all creation, flowing most visibly in women’s bodies through menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth.”
Viriditas is a natural flow that along with moisture in the body, keeps it healthy. And that women’s menstral cycles and viriditas go hand in hand.
Lee includes from Hildegard’s Causes and Cures,
“The stream of a woman’s menstrual period is her life-giving viriditas and her exuberant vigor.
This sprouts into offspring, as a tree with its vital force sprouts and flowers, producing leaves and fruits. So a woman, from the vital force of the menstrual blood, produces flowers and leaves in the fruit of her womb.”
“Hildegard’s viriditas is directly related to flowing and flowering.” But also as “the embodiment of divine creative force.”
Lee cites from Hildegard’s Scivias:
“I [soul] am the living breath in a human being, placed in a tabernacle of marrow, veins, bones and flesh, giving it vitality [viriditas] and supporting its every movement.
…for it gives vitality [viriditas] to the marrow and veins and members of the whole body, as the tree from its root gives sap and greenness [viriditas] to all the branches.
Women helping women
In the Afterword of the book, Lee writes about some similarities between Korean traditional medicine and that of Hildegard’s, including the use of mugwort as a remedy for various women’s issues.
As in Hildegard’s time to now, as Lee mentioned, it’s about women helping women with the issues we all deal with. I’ve had some great help recently from two women doctors on learning about HRT and my vitamin deficiencies.
It’s good to be tested and monitored during the healing process of any medical issue. You’ll find that done in those two docuseries I mention above as well. And both are full of recent medical findings and discoveries.
I hope this has been helpful in getting to know St. Hildegard better and also women’s health. In previous posts, I’ve had conversations with a naturopath and other healers who use Hildegard’s remedies. Be sure to check them out.
Leave a Reply