Hildegard had little formal education: She learned the Psalter in Latin but never mastered the Latin language. Nevertheless, following God’s command, she wrote down everything she was shown in her visions. Hildegard herself described it thus:
And it came to pass…when I was 42 years and 7 months old, that the heavens were opened and a blinding light of exceptional brilliance flowed through my entire brain. And so it kindled my whole heart and breast like a flame, not burning but warming…and suddenly I understood of the meaning of expositions of the books…
Feeling unworthy and unqualified for such a task, she was reticent about God's command, and wrote:
But although I heard and saw these things, because of doubt and low opinion of myself and because of diverse sayings of men, I refused for a long time a call to write, not out of stubbornness but out of humility, until weighed down by a scourge of God, I fell onto a bed of sickness.
Hildegard knew her visions were of Divine origin, but she yearned for them to be approved by the Church. Beset by this dilemma, she wrote to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who notified Pope Eugene III (1145-1153) of the situation. The Pontiff encouraged her to the task God commanded. Knowing she now had papal approval, the immediate result of her first recorded visions was her book Scivias ('Know the Ways of the Lord') and her fame spread
throughout Europe.
REGINA | 28