I found myself calling her the patron saint of creativity when I first began making my film. Saint Hildegard of Bingen evokes a calling — that sweet spot of creativity that we all yearn to inhabit, which is also deeply spiritual in nature. She is venerated for her widely recognized impact on today’s theologians, artists, musicians, doctors and educators. I explored that theme closely in The Unruly Mystic: Saint Hildegard, and it has continued to shape everything I have made since.
She is indeed the unruly mystic. Her story invites us all to embrace the connection between God, nature and art. This is the story of a powerful muse who invites us to create magic in our own lives by letting the ordinary touch the divine.
People often ask how I came to make a documentary about Saint Hildegard of Bingen. I don’t see this film as a religious historical documentary, but as a prescriptive one — about how a woman still widely unknown outside certain circles, though recently canonized and made a Doctor of the Church by the Vatican in 2013, continues to have a profound impact on today’s theologians, artists, musicians and educators.
It began in spring 2013, when I took my first pilgrimage to the Rhineland — a ten-day retreat billed as a Birthing Vision, coinciding with the spring equinox and the opportunity to immerse myself in the light and greening power of Hildegard. That retreat became the seed of The Unruly Mystic, a prescriptive documentary of how I, as the filmmaker, reaffirm my life’s creative work by falling in love with a 12th-century saint. That journey has since taken me to Germany many more times and introduced me to artists, writers, musicians, theologians and doctors around the world whose lives have been changed by Saint Hildegard.
Among the voices in the film are Benedictine Sr. Lydia Stritzl from the Abbey of St. Hildegard, Germany; Professor Beverly Mayne Kienzle at the Harvard Divinity School; Lynn Maxwell, a world-class mezzo-soprano performing her one-woman Hildegard show, The Living Light; Dr. Wighard Strehlow and his healing work at the Hildegard Center in Allensbach, Germany; and American Episcopal priest and theologian Matthew Fox.
“This film presents a deservedly dynamic and alive portrait of this amazing pioneer and renaissance woman, Hildegard of Bingen, as it zeroes in especially on her powers of healing through her music and her dietary teachings. It presents a diverse mix of contemporary persons, women and men, who have been affected by her many works so imbued with spirit in search of wisdom. An excellent documentary, full of Hildegard’s spirit!”
— Matthew Fox, author of Hildegard of Bingen, a Saint for Our Times, Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen, and Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs
As I witnessed how Saint Hildegard continues to inspire people in these challenging times, I was reminded of my own dark night of the soul as a 22-year-old in Barcelona in 1983. In that moment I decided to pursue a life of creativity — a life I am still living today as a filmmaker. I didn’t realize it then, but Saint Hildegard was already walking with me. I rediscovered her as a source of my inspiration as I conducted my interviews and walked in her path during multiple visits to her Rhineland homeland.
Hildegard Speaks
The journey did not end with the first film. In the hot summer of 2019, I joined German theologian and Hildegard scholar Dr. Annette Esser on the International Hildegard Pilgrimage along the Hildegard Way in Germany. Dr. Esser had written nine remarkable texts in which Hildegard speaks in the first person — about her childhood, her visions, her healing arts, her monasteries. Walking that ancient landscape with pilgrims from the United States, South Africa, Ireland and Germany, we filmed her reading those texts aloud at the very spots where Hildegard had lived and worked.
The result was Hildegard Speaks — a docudrama woven from landscape, music, medieval costume and Hildegard’s own words. We premiered it virtually during the 2020 Saint Hildegard Pilgrimage to over 100 people around the world, and gave the German-language premiere at the Hildegard Week in Bad Kreuznach in August 2022. A companion book in eight languages was published alongside the film. Dr. Beverly Mayne Kienzle, retired Harvard professor and author of numerous books on Saint Hildegard, provided educational notes for the project.
What began as a single pilgrimage in 2013 has become an ongoing, living relationship with one of history’s most extraordinary figures — expressed through film, pilgrimage, and a growing international community of people who hear her voice and find their own.
A legacy recognized
In September 2023, both The Unruly Mystic: Saint Hildegard and The Unruly Mystic: John Muir were acquired for the Matthew Fox Creation Spirituality Collection, held in the Rare and Distinctive Collections of the University Libraries at the University of Colorado, Boulder. That Matthew Fox — whose words appear above, and whose theology of Creation Spirituality runs as an invisible thread through both films — now shares an archival home with this work is something I find deeply moving. It is a recognition that these films belong not just to a moment, but to a continuing conversation about creativity, nature and the sacred.
It is my wish to inspire audiences on their own path of creativity and meaning through the telling of this unique mystic figure. At the end of the film, I give credit to being inspired by the patron saint of creativity. I have also written more about that here.
About Matthew Fox
Matthew Fox has devoted his career to recovering the suppressed mystical and life-affirming traditions within Christianity and other faiths. His theology of Creation Spirituality — the conviction that we are born in original blessing, not original sin — earned him the censure of the Vatican, which silenced him in 1989 and led to his dismissal from the Dominican Order in 1993. Now an Episcopal priest, Fox is the author of more than thirty books, including works on Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas, and the cosmic Christ. His Creation Spirituality Collection is archived in the Rare and Distinctive Collections of the University of Colorado, Boulder.