Poet, essayist, musician, and visionary, Hildegard of Bingen is the most well-known female mystic of the Middle Ages, renowned in Europe for advising popes and bishops, conducting theological debates with Bernard of Clairvaux, and composing Ordo Virtutum. In this program, host Avril Benoit and theology experts Dr. Kathy Garay and Dr. Madeleine Jeay of McMaster University tour the abbey Hildegard founded in the Rhine river valley. Dramatic reenactments highlight key events in Hildegard’s life. Audio accompaniments include selections of Hildegard’s musical compositions. (49 minutes)
The most celebrated work of Dante Alighieri is certainly the Divina Commedia—a vision of hell, purgatory, and heaven that provides a strangely surrealistic view of medieval attitudes on religious dogma and the price of disobedience. In this program, dramatizations of scenes depicting courtly love, sexual love, love of God, and love of the Virgin Mary are featured. A BBC Production. (50 minutes)