Green Mass: The Ecological Theology of St. Hildegard of Bingen

Green Mass is a meditation on Saint Hildegard of Bingen's vegetal vision, which infuses plant life with spirit and blends ecology and theology. It explores the symphonic multiplicity of meanings in her thought, listening to the resonances between holy fire and the aridity of a world aflame. The book is accompanied by original compositions available for streaming and download.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 184 pages
Publication date: 07 September 2021
Publisher: Stanford University Press

Green Mass is a meditation on and with twelfth-century Christian mystic and polymath Saint Hildegard of Bingen. Philosopher Michael Marder explores Hildegard's vegetal vision, which infuses plant life with spirit and blends theology with ecology. The book stages a fresh encounter between present-day and premodern concerns, ecology and theology, philosophy and mysticism, the material and the spiritual.

Hildegard's concept of viriditas, the vegetal power of creation, symbolizes her profound understanding of physical reality and spiritual elevation. Marder explores the symphonic multiplicity of meanings in her thought, listening to the resonances between the ardency of holy fire and the aridity of a world aflame. Across Hildegard's cosmos, we hear the anarchic proliferation of her ecological theology, in which both God and greening are circular, without beginning or end.

Introduced with a foreword by philosopher Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback and accompanied by cellist Peter Schuback's musical movements, which echo both Hildegard's own compositions and key themes in each chapter of the book, this multifaceted work creates a resonance chamber, in which to discover the living world anew.

The original compositions accompanying each chapter are available free for streaming and for download at www.sup.org/greenmass.

Weight: 252g
Dimension: 139 x 215 x 16 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781503629264