Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard's work, of exceptional breadth for a woman of her time, encompasses theology, music, and the natural sciences. Encouraged by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and authorized by Pope Eugene III, who became acquainted with her writings around 1147-1148, she set her visions down in writing. Her theological trilogy brings together the Scivias ("Know the Ways", completed around 1151), the Liber vitae meritorum (c. 1158-1163), and the Liber divinorum operum (c. 1163-1174). She also composed treatises on medicine and natural history, the Physica and the Causae et curae, which bear witness to her knowledge of plants, remedies, and the physiology of her era. As a musician, she gathered more than seventy liturgical pieces in the Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum and wrote the Ordo virtutum, a sung liturgical drama. We also owe to her an invented language, the Lingua ignota, and a vast correspondence—about four hundred letters—addressed to popes, bishops, sovereigns, and communities. A rare feat for a medieval woman, she undertook several public preaching tours in the Rhineland cities of Cologne, Trier, and Mainz.

Hildegard's holiness is rooted in her visionary experience, which she attributed entirely to God and not to her own merits. Presenting herself as a fragile and uneducated creature, she compared herself, in a famous image, to a light feather carried by the breath of God. This claimed humility was combined with a remarkable boldness: she did not hesitate to rebuke prelates and princes, to undertake preaching tours, and to defend her community, even going so far as to endure an interdict in the final years of her life for having maintained the burial of a reconciled excommunicate. Her reputation for holiness, the gift of counsel, and healing spread during her lifetime, and many of the faithful, as well as ecclesiastical authorities, sought her discernment. Venerated as a saint immediately after her death, she was the subject of formal canonization attempts as early as the 13th century, though the procedure did not succeed at that time; her cult, however, was maintained continuously, particularly in the Germanic dioceses, where her name appeared in the Roman Martyrology.

The case of Hildegard illustrates the notion of "equivalent canonization": due to the lack of conclusion in medieval trials, her holiness rested on an ancient and continuous cult rather than a solemn canonization. On May 10, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI officially extended her veneration to the universal Church, thus inscribing her in the catalogue of saints. A few months later, on October 7, 2012, the feast of the Holy Rosary, he proclaimed her a Doctor of the Church by an apostolic letter, jointly with Saint John of Avila. Hildegard thus became the fourth woman to receive this title, after Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Teresa of Avila, and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. This recognition consecrated the doctrinal scope of her theological and spiritual teaching. Her liturgical feast is set for September 17, the anniversary of her death. The very nature of her cause, founded on an immemorial cult, explains why no particular miracle was required for this modern recognition, in accordance with the customs of equivalent canonization.

Hildegard's legacy extends far beyond the religious framework. A recognized theologian, she is also considered one of the first figures of Western sacred music, and her compositions have experienced a remarkable rediscovery since the 20th century. Her scientific writings have nourished a tradition of "Saint Hildegard medicine," still invoked in certain currents of phytotherapy, even if its medical value belongs to the history of science. She is readily presented as the patron saint of musicians, writers, and those who devote themselves to the natural sciences. The center of her cult remains the Abbey of Saint Hildegard in Eibingen, near Rüdesheim, where her relics are kept and where a Benedictine community perpetuates her memory; the Rupertsberg monastery, which she had founded, was, however, destroyed in the 17th century. In his 2012 apostolic letter, Benedict XVI hailed her as a "light for her people and for her time," echoing an expression of John Paul II, and emphasized the relevance of her testimony, which unites faith, reason, art, and care for creation.