Saint Hildegard, Abbess, artist, author, composer, mystic, pharmacist, poet, preacher, theologian and Dr. of the Church

September 17 is Feast Day of Saint Hildegard of Bingen, a German Benedictine abbess, one of only four women Doctor of the Church, polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. She has been considered by a number of scholars to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.

In 2012 Hildegard was canonized and proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Pope Benedict XVI, one of only four women to have been so named. She is revered as a patron saint of musicians and writers.

The Four Female Doctors of the Church

Saint Hildegard was a German abbess, visionary mystic, and composer. In 2012 she was proclaimed a doctor of the church, one of only four women to have been so named. She is revered as a patron saint of musicians and writers. Hildegard was born of noble parents and was educated at the Benedictine cloister of Disibodenberg by Jutta, an anchorite (religious recluse) and sister of the count of Spanheim. Hildegard was 15 years old when she began wearing the Benedictine habit and pursuing a religious life. She succeeded Jutta as prioress in 1136.

Having experienced visions since she was a child, at age 43 she consulted her confessor, who in turn reported the matter to the archbishop of Mainz. A committee of theologians subsequently confirmed the authenticity of Hildegard’s visions, and a monk was appointed to help her record them in writing. Hildegard took ten years to write her Scivias (Know the Ways). Pope Eugene III read it, and in 1147, encouraged her to continue writing.

Scivias (1141–52), consists of 26 visions that are prophetic and apocalyptic in form and in their treatment of such topics as the church, the relationship between God and humanity, and redemption.

Her Book of the Merits of Life and Book of Divine Works followed. She wrote over 300 letters to people who sought her advice; she also composed short works on medicine and physiology, and sought advice from contemporaries such as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.

About 1147 Hildegard left Disibodenberg with several nuns to found a new convent at Rupertsberg, where she continued to exercise the gift of prophecy and to record her visions in writing.

Saint Hildegard Prayer to the Holy Spirit

Holy spirit, making life alive,
moving in all things, root of all created being,
cleansing the cosmos of every impurity, effacing guilt,
anointing wounds.
You are lustrous and praiseworthy life,
You waken and re-awaken everything that is.