HILDEGARD Life &Times
1113
LIFE: Hildegard enters religious life. At 15, she has already experienced the mystic visions that will play a central role in her works. TIMES: The Spanish redouble their efforts in the Reconquista following the capture of Zaragoza by the Muslim Almoravid dynasty in 1110. A large fleet is assembled and sets out for the Balearic islands.
1136
LIFE: Hildegard succeeds her instructor as prioress at the cloister of Disibodenberg. During the following years, she writes several religious texts. TIMES: Kings Stephen of England and David I of Scotland sign the first Treaty of Durham. Fighting resumes two years later when David attacks England.
1152
LIFE: Scivias (Know the Way), a collection of 26 mystic visions recorded for Hildegard by a scribe, is completed. It will become her bestknown literary work. TIMES: The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII is annulled. The authoritative queen later remarries Henry II of England, bringing Normandy and Aquitaine under English rule.
1098
LIFE: Hildegard is born in Alzey, now in Rhineland-palatinate. She receives an education fitting her noble rank under the direction of an anchoress in a local Benedictine cloister. TIMES: After a long siege and the arrival of extra troops from Genoa, the city of Antioch (in modern-day Turkey) falls into the hands of the first Christian crusaders. The citadel, however, remains untaken.
c1147
LIFE: A group of nuns follow Hildegard out of the cloister as she founds a new convent in Rupertsberg, near Bingen. Hildegard continues her work on the Symphonia, started around 1140.
TIMES: Upon new papal orders, German forces join Louis VII of France at the Battle of Constantinople on the Second Crusade.
The Christian army is defeated in both Constantinople and Damascus.
1179
LIFE: Hildegard dies in Rupertsberg at the age of 81. The composer and poetess is hailed as a saint by her earliest biographers, but she is only canonised nine centuries later.
TIMES: Hartmann von Aue begins work on the first German Arthurian romance, Erec. The long poem is based on a work by Chrétien de Troyes, a sign of the cultural exchanges taking place at the time.