Hildegard's Healing Plants: From Her Medieval Classic PhysicaMedieval saint, mystic, healer, and visionary-Hildegard von Bingen has made a comeback. She is now popular in natural healing circles, in medieval and women's studies, and among those interested in investing the everyday with the spiritual. Hildegard's Healing Plants is a gift version and new translation of the 'Plant' section of Physica, Hildegard's classic work on health and healing. Hildegard comments on 230 plants and grains-most of which are still grown in home gardens and sold at local health food stores. In one of many entries on women's health, Hildegard writes, 'Also if a pregnant woman labors much in childbirth, let someone cook pleasant herbs, such as fennel and assurum, in water with fear and great moderation, squeeze out the water, and place them while they are warm around her thighs and back, tied gently with a piece of cloth, so that her pain and her closed womb is opened more pleasantly and easily.' Whether read for the sheer enjoyment of Hildegard's earthy, intelligent voice ("Let a man who has an overabundance of lust in his loins cook wild lettuce in water and pour it over himself in a sauna") or for her encyclopedic and often still relevant understanding of natural health, Hildegard's Healing Plants is a treasure for gardeners, natural healing enthusiasts, and Hildegard fans everywhere. Hildegard's Healing Plants includes 230 plants and grains-most of which are still grown in home gardens and sold at local health food stores. |
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Hildegard's Healing Plants: From Her Medieval Classic Physica Hildegard Von Bingen Limited preview - 2002 |
Common terms and phrases
add a little agrimony anoint bad humors betony better blood boil bread chervil chest comfrey costmary cough cured digestion dittany earth eat this powder equal weight eyes fennel fenugreek fern fever feverfew flesh galingale German chamomile gout grows harm healed healthy heat herbs Hildegard honey hyssop intestines inwardly juice lard leprosy Let a person let the person let them drink let them eat let them take Let whoever suffers lettuce lovage lungs medicine meranda moderately moist moisture mucus mushroom night ointment oregano person cook person drink person eats person take person to eat person who suffers person's head phlegm piece of cloth place it warm poison potion pound previously mentioned pulverize purged sage scrofula seed small dish someone southernwood stinging nettle stomach strain strength tempered tormentil twice ulcers vinegar warm and dry warm than cold warmth whoever suffers pain wine worms wound yarrow zedoary
Popular passages
Page xv - God was transmitted into the plants, animals, and precious gems. People, in turn, ate the plants and animals and acquired some of the gems, thereby obtaining "viriditas.
Page x - Hildegard's mystical books, which was written between 1163 and 1 1 73, concerns itself with the unity of creation. Hildegard herself does not use the terms macrocosm and microcosm, but she succeeds in synthesizing into one great whole her theological beliefs along with her knowledge of the elements of the universe and the structures within the human body. This work is often considered as the epitome of the science of her time.
Page xiii - Church would have been spared the defilement of an indelible stain. Hildegard's correspondence with St. Bernard, then preaching his crusade, with four popes, Eugenius III, Anastasius IV, Adrian IV, and Alexander III, and with the emperors Conrad and Frederic Barbarossa, brings her into the current of general European history.
Page xi - Hildegard's uses of plants, one cannot decide with certainty whether she is relying on her own experience, traditional lore, or written authorities, although she does not seem to depend much on either Pliny or Isidore. On the other hand, the plants she uses are generally those which could be collected from the woods and fields or grown in the convent garden.
Page xiii - Approximately seventy sequences and hymns, antiphons, and responsories are found in the cycle and were written for a wide range of liturgical celebrations, from important church feasts to those of lesser-known saints.
Page xii - Hildegard usually indicates what medicinal purposes the plant in question serves. Sometimes this follows fairly obviously from its qualities; at other times the connections are more tenuous.
Page vii - Hildebert, was a knight in the service of Meginhard, the count of Spanheim. At the age of six, the child began to have the religious visions that were to continue the rest of her life.
Page viii - Latin. At the age of fifteen, she was clothed in the habit of a nun in the hermitage of Jutta, which, by this time, had attracted enough followers to become a community, following the Rule of Saint Benedict.
Page xii - People could then determine their effect on the persons who ate or used them, according to whether they were in or out of humor — that is, in a balanced or unbalanced state.