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Hildegard von Bingen History of Naturopathy
Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) is today a herbal medicine whose name is especially popular in herbal medicine. However, first of all, much of what happens under "Hildegard von Bingen Medizin" has little to do with the Benedictine Abbess of the 12th century, and secondly, there is the danger of adopting a world view that stands in the way of the self-determination of the individual.
contents
- Hildegard's work
- Hildegard's medicine
- Thinking in analogies
- Mental illness
- humility
- Healing as a commitment
- The "physica" and the "causa et curae"
- The social order
- The "Hildegard Medicine"
- Hildegard and today's naturopathy
- references
Hildegard was already famous during his lifetime; John of Salisbury already wrote about her visions in 1167; Albertus Magnus praised her; Dante Alighieri was inspired by her work Sci vias. The psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) finally discussed her visions in his "Complex Psychology".
The traditional naturopathy of Hildegard von Bingen. Picture: photophonie - fotolia She exchanged letters with emperors and popes, bishops and princes, as well as ordinary citizens - in Germany, England, Holland, France, Italy, Switzerland and Greece. In doing so, she sharply criticized Miss Stands and also pointed out the powerful to their ethical misdemeanors.
Hildegard's work
Between 1141 and 1151, Hildegard Sci vias wrote after her allegedly revealed God in 1141, and thus she had learned as a seer. She describes 26 visions in it. The first part deals with the relationship of man to God, sin and the path to godly behavior. She also designs a cosmology and discusses the angels.
The second part deals with healing art, and it is inseparable from God. First comes the creation of the world and man, then the duty of man to obey God. Man does not stop them and fails. Then he will be redeemed by Christ. Hildegard sees these three stages as determining in all areas of life: original state, crisis and prosperity. In addition, she criticizes the behavior of the clergy of her time - especially the purchase of clerical offices and the priesthood.
Her second work, Liber vitae meritorum, written 1158-1161, deals with the life-view and life-guidance of man. Hildegard goes back here before the scholasticism of her time; Catholic scholasticism developed a contrast between God and the world, body and soul, anticipating the later approaches of early modernist humanism: science and the laws of nature did not necessarily require worship. God created everything, but man could intellectually grasp the world without denying his work. Hildegard, on the other hand, does not separate God, world and human decision: God is omnipotent to them, man powerless; she sees herself as a feather, carried by God's strong wind into the wonders of God.
From 1163 to 1174 she wrote Liber divinorum operum as a world and human science. All three works belong together: the Sci vias is about faith, the Liber vitae meritorum about life and Liber divinorum operum about the world and man.
At the age of 70 she wrote a work about the cosmos. In it she interprets the beginning of John's Gospel and discusses the Trinity of God.
The abbess did not understand herself primarily as an intellectual, but lived, like other writers of her time, in a world of images. At that time, this was not considered metaphorical, that is, as a picture of something, but as a direct expression of the experience of God.
God was for them the "living, awake, most bright light." All realms of being took in the viriditas, the joy of life, their outcome, which God had led into creation. So she also thought like a poet: she related events to each other and brought them together in her imagery.
The Diabolus, for example, was for them the "pitch-black, sinister bird," the bishops were of "trees planted with God," and the monks, as "brave fighters in faith, humility, and love, should bear the bond of obedience."
Hildegard's medicine
"Learn also to heal the wounds of the sinners judicially and yet mercifully as the highest physician left you the example of the savior to save the people," wrote Hildegard to the Archbishop of Trier. The highest doctor was Jesus for them. The obligation to heal was explicit, therefore for everyone, no matter what he had done. The example of Jesus also showed her that piety did not mean accepting illness as fate, that is to say fatalistic. Rather, physical healing was directly related to opening the patient to the message of God.
She learned, as do all the medicine teachers of her time, the theory of the humors developed by Hippocrates and continued by Galen. Diseases were embedded in a cosmic context for her. God and the devil played their part; even demons brought plagues and death.
There was no academic medicine in the systematic sense at Hildegard's time. Healing from disease and salvation is inseparable for her. It includes ancient herbal knowledge as well as folk medicine and a human image of the Old Testament. Added to this is the already well-developed monastic medicine of the monasteries in Franconia, Spain, Scotland and Italy; this combined empirical approaches with empirical knowledge and Christian doctrine of salvation.
What is new, however, is the visionary justification of her doctrine of salvation. Hildegard sees herself not as a researcher, but as a vessel for God's will. That is why it links medical tradition with religious piety. In doing so she puts herself in the old tradition of the healing priests, which the clergy of her time just canceled.
The second Lateran Council in 1139 determined that no priest should be active as a doctor. Scholasticism distinguished between natural diseases that fell within the domain of the physician and supernatural afflictions for which the Catholic exorcists were responsible. For Hildegard there was no such separation.
The cleric, on the other hand, translated the Christian idea that diseases were caused not only by misconduct but also by the attacks of the devil on healing: illness always showed a disturbance of the balance between divine and diabolical forces. The healing therefore always had to include the salvation of the soul, the diseased organ pointed the way, where the harmful forces had penetrated.
Compassion for the sick (miseriis compatiens) and mental support (cooperiens hominem) were as crucial as the medicine administered. Healing meant for them remedies, methods to remove the disease from the body, healthy nutrition, physical recovery, but above all mental cleansing. Today's nature healers see Hildegard's meaning: we would call their approach psychosomatic today. However, this "psychosomatic" was directly linked to the supernatural.
For example, she wrote to a priest: "Do not be afraid of the heaviness that upsets you in your sleep. It springs from you through the blood-red juices that are disturbed by the black-galleon complex. "Here she shows herself as a diagnostician in the galenic tradition of her time.
Then she continues: "For in them moves the old deceiver, if he does not hurt your senses, he brings you by juggling but in confusion. But by the divine decree, you are being punished by such affliction, so that fear will tame the carnal desire within you. "So here, it is no longer about strains on the (social) environment that disturb sleep because it affects the body Black God), but the struggle between God and the devil, but in consequence, God decides.
The work of supernatural powers was essential for the physical condition; The Christian woman represented the (early) medieval concept of the unity of body and soul. For example, gems could be used for healing, because "God has placed wonderful powers in the gems. All these powers find their existence in the knowledge of God and assist man in his bodily and spiritual necessities of life. Every stone has fire and moisture in it. They serve man as a blessing and remedy. Therefore, the gems are shunned by the devil and it shudders during the day and at night. "
Magic was as important as the supposed healing effect of the stones themselves. Agate was supposed to banish thieves when they made a cross with the agate. The Topaz worked against a fever, but only with the appropriate ritual: "If anyone has a fever, dig three smaller pits into soft bread with topaz, pour pure wine into them, and look at his face in the wine and say," I look at me as in the mirror, so that God can dispel this fever from me ".
Thinking in analogies
Hildegard's worldview and her medicine were determined by the analogue thinking of the Middle Ages. God had created the world perfectly, and that meant that every element in one area had a counterpart in another. The naturalists therefore interpreted animals that we now identify as whales, seals, sharks or rays as seahorses, guinea pigs or even sea monks, because the fauna of the country had its counterpart in the water.
In the judiciary, therefore, the principle of "like with like" was to be repaid in order to restore the disharmony of the divine order. In medicine, plants were seen as remedies that on an associative level resembled the symptoms of disease: mistletoe, for example, was supposed to help against epilepsy called epilepsy; because she grew up on trees without falling down.
Mental illness
The Obsessi, lunatici or even daemoniaci of the Middle Ages are known today as people with mental health problems. Hildegard von Bingen saw these "obsessions" as examinations of God. It allows the demons to invade the body to give people the opportunity to be purified. However, those affected would not really be obsessed, but only dizzy.
The case became known to Sihewize, a nobleman who had been possessed by "demons" for seven years. The suffering that plagued the woman can not be judged from a distance. The Benedictines in the abbey Brauweiler, fought the "demons" in vain with exorcisms, in the Rupertsberg church, however, she was freed on Holy Saturday by the "evil spirits" and entered Hildegard's monastery.
The scholar wrote to Arnold von Trier: "And this woman has been freed from the torments of the devil. She was then seized by an illness she had not felt before. But now she has attained the powers of body and soul in full health. "
In the High Middle Ages, the notion of being-be-to-be solidified to the effect that the devil and his servants used the body as a vessel. Animals like snakes, worms, frogs and toads also lived inside the body, especially in women's. There they slipped through the body openings during sleep, understandably more often in women, because the one more entrance offered.
Demonic obsession was mostly due to the sins of those affected. After all, the Christian scholastics saw epilepsy as a brain organic disorder, separating it from the natural and the supernatural, in contrast to Hildegard. Whether it was perhaps a demon, the exorcist had to decide.
humility
For Hildegard, the mother of all virtues was discretio, humility. Humility meant attention, patience, moderation, prudence and wisdom. The Discretio brought the balance into the other virtues and vices. Humility was needed to be merciful and caring for the people.
Hildgard wrote: "The soul flows through the body as the juice flows through the tree. The juice causes the tree to flower green and bear fruit. And how does the fruit of the tree mature? By the appropriate change of the weather. The sun gives heat, the rain moisture, and so it matures under the influence of the weather. What shoud that? Like the sun, God's compassionate grace enlightens man; in the rain the breath of the Holy Spirit batheth him, and the right measure (discretio) produces in him, like a corresponding change in the weather, the perfection of good fruits. "
Healing as a commitment
The doctor took care of the man. This duty resulted from obedience to God - not because of a Hippocratic oath. The example of this duty of the physician she sees in the sacrifice of Abraham, who wanted to sacrifice his only son to God. With this, Abraham became the "Father of Mercy".
So the doctor did not direct life, but he only guarded it. When a human died, when a human being was born, only God decided for Hildegard. Hildegard's thinking meant to cultivate life to the utmost. Illness was not God's intended fate, nor was it an ordeal of God. Healing therefore, like Jesus, meant turning to man to open to the divine message.
To "manipulate" life was out of the question for her. Man, as he was, was created by God, and emancipating himself from it would have meant a sacrilege for her.
The "physica" and the "causa et curae"
Hildegard summarized her texts on natural science and medicine in a book she wrote between 1151 and 1158. Today it is known only from the two works "Physica" (natural history) and "Causa et Curae" (medicine).
The writings were probably intended as a manual, because Hildegard then ran their own monastery in Rupensberg, and the nuns needed a guide to treat together with Hildegard the sick.
The "Physica" is divided into nine parts, which are arranged chronically according to the creation story: elements, stones, metals, ie the inorganic systematizes them as well as fish, reptiles, birds and (mammal) animals. She is scientifically accurate for her time. It describes the look, characteristics, and benefits to humans, outlining and discussing specimens of each species as closely as possible for their medical use.
She also places mythical creatures in her natural encyclopedia, which shows how much she was based on the tradition of antiquity. She made, for example, the basilisk, which hatched from a serpent egg that hatched a rooster, responsible for animal diseases.
The ancient Greeks had called this fantasy reptile "Little King". This Basiliskos was to rule over the serpents and therefore wore a crown. In it, zoology mingled with mythology. As the Roman Pliny the Elder wrote: "By hissing he chases away all snakes and does not move, like the others, his body through multiple turns, but goes proudly and half erect. He lets the shrubs die off, not only by the touch, but also by the breath, scorches the herbs and blows up stones: such a strength has this monster. It was believed that somebody had once killed him on horseback with a spear and that the poison acting on it had risen up, bringing death not only to the rider but also to the horse. And this mighty monster - because kings have often wished to see it dead - is killed by the fumes of the weasel: so much did nature like to leave nothing without some counterforce. The weasels are thrown into the caves [basilisks], which are easily recognized by the parched soil. These kill by their smell, but at the same time die themselves, and the dispute of nature is cleared up. "
The venom of the basilisk should kill all life by its stench alone; and his look petrified. It was supposed to come from the egg of a rooster or a black chicken, either from an egg without yolk, or from a toad or snake brooding that egg in the dung heap. When the monster slipped, it crept into mountain shafts, wells or dungeons.
Researchers in the Middle Ages, and not just Hildegard, considered the basilisk a real being and speculated on how his powers came about. For example, Thomas of Cantimpré thought that the eyes of the basilisk would shine, destroying the astral body of man. But he thought it was a fairy tale that the basilisk hatched from the egg of a cock.
Hildegard von Bingen on a postcard published in Germany (1979). Picture: Laufer - Fotolia She also believed in the magical power of Mandrake, a nightshade that causes strong hallucinations. The people of the Middle Ages believed that the root of the mandrake would be the "gallowsman" if the seed of a hanged man dripped on them. The hallucinogenic effect of the plant, and one with a lot of imagination, human-like appearance of the root, may underlie this notion.
Hildegard's medicine is nevertheless very practical; However, it remains unclear whether the existing material matches the original. The manuscript in the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel dates from the 14th century, and parts of the text were added clearly after Hildegard's death. If, on the other hand, Hildegard's essential parts come, she turns out to be a thoroughly rational-thinking doctor, in contrast to her theological explanations of the world, which are available in the original. The work deals with:
1) From the creation of the world,
2) The construction work of the cosmos,
3) Of the world elements,
4) From the education of man,
5) From the healthy and sick body,
6) How a human becomes,
7) Sexual behavior,
8) Man between sleep and waking,
9) Diseases from head to toe,
10) Of the conditions and circumstances of woman,
11) Of the diet and digestion,
12) From the sex life,
13) Of the emotions,
14) Of the metabolic disorders,
15) Of the remedies,
16) Of the signs of life,
17) From the healthy lifestyle,
18) From medical care,
19) Of the virtue of the doctor and
20) The picture of life.
One reason, from today's perspective, a rational approach to dealing with herbs, would be that the descriptions were added 100 years after Hildegard's death. In the thirteenth century, contact with the Arabs in the crusades enriched the medicine of Central Europe with the practical methods of the Orient. It is more obvious, however, that Hildegard consumed here from her own experiences, applying the recipes herself, collecting and trying out the herbs herself.
Hildegard calls the soff, a potion set with hot water. In it also powdered herbs can be stirred. Herbs can also be pickled in vinegar or wine, or eaten as tortellies, cookies as wheat flour, and placed on the body. Hildegard prepared ointments with butter, goose or pork lard, bear fat or deer tallow. She made patches from herbs and resin. For incense, she put dried herbs on red-hot roof tiles.
The social order
Hildegard distinguished between the spiritual and secular sphere. The spirituales divided them into priests and monks / nuns, the saeculares into powerful and powerless, rich and poor, nobles and non-nobles.
She came even from the high nobility and was extremely stable. So she refused to train non-adolescents in the art of healing. The inequality came, according to her, from God and therefore should not be touched.
Monks and nuns valued them most among men, for their virginity came closest to the perfect way of life. They would be the only free people because of their free will to fully serve God. In the afterlife they would therefore receive the highest pay.
The "Hildegard Medicine"
In 1970 Gottfried Hertzka, a doctor from Austria, published the "Hildegard Medicine" together with the German naturopath Wighard Strehlow. Plant medicines, gemstones, foods and cosmetics of "healthy lifestyle".
Hertzka and Strehlow gave advice on various diseases in a "large Hildegard pharmacy". They often made sense, but they have little to do with Hildegard von Bingen. The Stiftung Warentest wrote in "The other medicine - alternative healing methods evaluated for you": "The marketing of the name Hildegard von Bingen and the use of their writings in a way that is barely covered by the original, has the most knowledgeable professors of this matter A public statement causes: The attempts to bring a perfectly legitimate natural medicine as "Hildegard medicine" in the medical practice and the field of pharmacy, lack any scientific basis. "
Hildegard and today's naturopathy
Hildegard's reputation in contemporary natural history is based on the following principles formulated by her: Physical illnesses have mental causes; man is connected to the elements; the connection to the cosmos is part of the healing; Diseases arise from a disharmony between man and creation.
The enthusiasm for "Hildegard's medicine" often relies on the "wrong horse", as is often the case in postmodern esotericism. The praised "holistic thinking" of Hildegard is only a thought-provoking impulse that it thinks humans and the environment together. A model for a socially and ecologically balanced society, as it strives for the progressive naturopathy, it is by no means - on the contrary.
The abbess was a child of her time and thought deeply anti-democratic: The hierarchy of nobility, clergy and powerless people immediately expressed God's will for them; As a result, society did not allow itself to be changed by people; they were neither able nor had a right to do so. This "social wholeness" can not be separated from Hildegard's "holistic healing". Healing meant for them to follow "God's commandments" and submit to social inequality.
It was not about improving social conditions to relieve the suffering of the powerless; rather, the individual had to submit to the role prescribed by God. The reward was waiting in the afterlife. To adopt such a model of the world today negates the principles of the bourgeois constitutional state, as well as equal opportunities. Further ideas of social emancipation are not even conceivable in Hildegard's cosmos.
Her visions, that is, her associations of symbolic images that she combined into worlds of images in order to make sense of them, are perfectly suitable for therapies from the point of view of dream research. However, they activate the patient (and healer) as subjective realities and not through interventions of the supernatural. Just as the shaman's hunting ritual actually worked because the hunter was mentally hunted and thus more successful, the belief that the forces of God defeated the devil's work in the sick could strengthen the patient and in many cases bring about a cure.
Thinking in analogies, as the abbess also advocated, is only "superstitious" if we apply it to organic diseases. Simply put, mistletoe does not help with the biochemical processes involved in an epileptic seizure. However, analogies can bring therapeutic benefits to the mental processing of suffering. It is not about the scientific ingredients, but about the work with symbols, intuition, imagination and inspiration. To put it bluntly, a person developing psychic disorders, resorting to addictive substances, suffering from insomnia and difficulty concentrating because he has forgotten his social roots might recall the sight of a strong oak tree, focusing on these roots and thus initiating a healing process put. The healing takes place in the subject and not by the object.
Today, however, it would be crucial to regard these (dream) images as guides to the unconscious, to act as symbols and consequently not to force the patient into a religious system, but to leave it to him as his own experience.
Dealing with medieval medicine, rather than seeking a "holistic" dream-middle age, should consider social reality: our ancestors were helplessly exposed to infectious diseases, and the average life expectancy was half that of today.
There were two main reasons for this: The first was the catastrophic hygienic conditions in which, in the literal sense of the word, stinking inequality, the second were the wrong treatment methods. The teaching theory of Hippocrates and Galen was not "alternative", but partly, for example, when it came to viruses, simply wrong - this was particularly clear in the great plague of the 14th century.
Here, the healer, as well as the other doctors in today's Germany, far behind the findings of the Orient. 200 years before her, the Iranian al-Razi had also described the interplay between mental and mental illness, without seeing it as a struggle between supernatural powers. 100 years ago, Avicenna had not only described the human bloodstream in Persia, but also discussed the infection of human-to-human diseases, in detail through germs in the soil and in the water. The significance of these great Persian physicians lay precisely in the fact that they no longer regarded illness as the effects of the supernatural to which man was powerless.
Hildegard von Bingen's significance lies not in her belief that her doctrine of salvation was sent directly by God, but in the realization that therapies affect the whole body. Here her herbal pharmacy gets a place - even today. As weeds outlaw native plants are her important medicinal plants, and the applications described by them are valid in many cases.
In addition, herbal medicine actually acts more "holistically" than conventional medicine. Sage, marigold, burdock, ivy, yarrow or rosemary improve overall health, while pharmaceutical products concentrate on combating individual symptoms. Hildegard interpreted collecting, preparing and applying religiously; but, in practical terms, it was often correct. When, and in what degree of ripeness fruits are picked, perennials are cut or roots are dug, how long they dry, how teas prepare, decides on the effect.
Compassion, ie mental health care, contributes significantly to healing in many diseases. Even there the believer was right. However, applying their methods while at the same time "injecting" the underlying belief pattern into the patient is problematic. Especially to treat patients whose suffering also has a psychic origin, the result might be comparable to drug addicts, who in religious sects indeed get rid of the substance, but only at the price that they embark on a new immaturity.
To see the doctor as guardian of life, but not as the driver, as Hildegard did, can be interpreted positively from today's perspective - without, however, the "reverence for life" and the resulting awareness of the doctor about his own inadequacy with to subjugate submission to an "Almighty God".
Hildegard von Bingen was one of the great universal teachers of her time. To honor them historically and critically means, however, to see them as human beings of the Middle Ages - as an outstanding figure of an epoch whose thinking and lifeworld are, firstly, alien to us and secondly, there is no "secret" perspective for a social and ecological tomorrow. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
references
Tilo Altenburg: Social order conceptions with Hildgard von Bingen. Stuttgart 2007.
Hildegard von Bingen: "Now listen and learn, so that you blush. Correspondence translated to the oldest manuscripts and explained according to the sources. Freiburg 2008.