Saint Hildegard of Bingen

Virgin and Doctor of the Church

Feast Day

September 17

Life

1098–1179

Canonized

2012

Doctor of the Church

2012

Order

Benedictine

Born

Bermersheim vor der Höhe, Rhineland (Holy Roman Empire)

Hildegard, tenth child of a noble Rhineland family, was given as an oblate at age eight to the anchoress Jutta of Sponheim at the monastery of Disibodenberg. She received the Benedictine habit and on Jutta's death in 1136 succeeded her as magistra of the women's community. About 1150 she founded an independent Benedictine monastery at Rupertsberg near Bingen, and a daughter house at Eibingen in 1165.

From childhood she had received what she called visions of the living Light. About 1141 a prophetic command directed her to write. The result, Scivias (Know the Ways), was completed in 1151 and was approved at the Synod of Trier (1147-1148) by Pope Eugene III on the recommendation of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Two further visionary works followed, the Liber vitae meritorum (Book of the Rewards of Life) and the Liber divinorum operum (Book of Divine Works), along with treatises in natural science (Physica) and medicine (Causae et curae), an extensive correspondence with emperors, popes and bishops, the morality play Ordo Virtutum, and seventy-seven sung antiphons, hymns and sequences.

She died at Rupertsberg on 17 September 1179. Her cultus was confirmed by long-standing observance, and Pope Benedict XVI extended her veneration to the universal Church on 10 May 2012 (equipollent canonization) and proclaimed her a Doctor of the Church on 7 October 2012, the fourth woman so honored.