Vigils Reading – St Hildegard of Bingen

ST HILDEGARD OF BINGEN

From Butler’s Lives of the Saints1

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Hildegard of Bingen would have been remarkable in any century. In her

own century her achievements and her influence, particularly as a woman, were

extraordinary. She was born at Bermersheim…in the summer of 1098. Apart

from the fact that her father, Hildebert of Bermersheim, was a nobleman and

possibly in the service of the bishop of Speyer, little is known of her family

background. When she was only eight years old, she was sent to be educated by

a recluse, Blessed Jutta, who was living at Disbodenberg in an anchorhold. Over

the years girls came to join her and Jutta gave them the Rule of St Benedict.

Hildegard was a delicate child, but…her inner life was far from ordinary.

From the age of three she experienced visions or revelations that in the early

stages caused her pain and embarrassment. The revelations continued into her

adult life, and she experienced chronic ill health.

In 1136 Jutta died, and Hildegard became abbess in her place. Her

revelations and visions were still causing her anxiety. Her writings were

submitted to the archbishop of Mainz. The archbishop and his theologians

concluded that her visions were “from God”. Over the years with the help of a

young monk named Volmar and others she produced her principal work, “Know

the Ways of the Lord”.

In 1147 the archbishop of Mainz passed Hildegard’s work to the pope,

Blessed Eugenius III. With the advice of his close advisors, including St Bernard

of Clairvaux, the pope told her to live with her sisters faithfully observing the

Rule.

Hildegard and eighteen nuns moved to the Rupertsberg sometime

between 1147 and 1150. She found time to research and write on subjects that

fascinated her – a book on natural history, another on medicine. There was also

her voluminous correspondence, a substantial part of which has survived.

People from all walks of life came to consult her, but at the same time there were

others who denounced her as fraudulent, mad or worse.

Heidegard continued to the end of her life to stand her ground against

what she saw as the wrong use of authority. When over eighty she was frail

physically but continued to write, advise, instruct her nuns and encourage all

who came to her for help, until she died peacefully at St Rupert’s on September

17th, 1179. Miracles, which had also been recorded during her life, were

immediately reported at her tomb. In 1324 Pope John XXII gave permission for

public veneration, and she appears in local martyrologies from the fifteenth

century. Her relics, which were taken to Eibingen during the Thirty Years War,

were recognized in 1489 and again in 1498. Although she has never been

formally canonized, she is named as a saint in the Roman Martyrology, and

several German dioceses commemorate her on this day.