Hildegard of Bingen, Herbs, and the Greening Power: Women's Bodies & Balance with the Natural World

Name: Hildegard of Bingen, Herbs, and the Greening Power: Women's Bodies & Balance with the Natural World
Start: 2026-05-30T13:00:00-04:00
End: 2026-05-30T15:00:00-04:00
Location: 20 East 5th Street, Erie, PA, United States, Pennsylvania 16507

Schedule

Sat May 30 2026 at 01:00 pm to 03:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

20 East 5th Street, Erie, PA, United States, Pennsylvania 16507 | Erie, PA

Presented by Dr. Minji Lee from Montclair State University and facilitated by Leslie Alexander
Included with Museum admission.
We also ask that participants mark their attendance with donations in the memory of, and honor of, Ashton Clatterbuck. Ash was a young trans person from PA who took his own life in 2024. The Ashton Myles Clatterbuck Memorial Fund is an ongoing tribute to his commitment to social justice.
This lecture draws on Dr. Minji Lee’s recent publication, The Medieval Womb: Hildegard of Bingen's Views on the Female Reproductive Body.
Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), a German Benedictine nun, believed that human beings possess the power to heal themselves in body, mind, and soul as being created by God and inheriting the divine power. She used the concept of viriditas, the greening power, to explain human health and reproduction as analogous to the vitality by which trees and plants draw water and nutrients from the earth to produce leaves and flowers.
Hildegard particularly emphasized herbs as essential sources of healing and treatment for women's ailments, viewing the female body's regenerative capacity as an expression of this greening power. Dr Lee will offer a historical approach to understanding the medieval construction of women's bodies as positive and powerful through the framework of herbal medicine and viriditas.