Acta Sanctorum: St. Hildegard of Bingen (Sept 17)
September 17, 2025
Fr. John Colacino C.PP.S.

September 17

 

St. Hildegard of Bingen

 

Life. (1098-1179)

Religious founder, abbess, mystic, poet, musician, scientist. St. Hildegard of Bingen was all these, which surely makes her one of the most remarkable women of all time and all religions. When Hildegard was eight, her noble parents entrusted this rather frail child to be raised and educated by Blessed Jutta, a hermitess who lived nearby. Jutta taught her not only domestic skills but monastic spirituality, Latin, and hymnody. Jutta meanwhile founded a community of nuns, and Hildegard asked to join it. She was clothed with the habit at the age of fifteen. When Jutta died in 1136, her pupil took over as prioress.

From early years, Hildegard had been favored with visions and divine private revelations. Prophetic remarks would spill out in her ordinary conversation. When she learned that other people did not enjoy the same gift, she became embarrassed. Finally she was impelled to recount these experiences to her spiritual director, who related them to the Archbishop of Mainz. The archbishop was convinced they were genuine, so he told her henceforth to dictate what her heavenly voices said. Of the books of revelations that she now authored, most of them in apocalyptic terms, the most important was the book called Scivias. It took ten years to complete, and deals with God, creation and redemption, in 26 visions. Pope Blessed Eugenius III got interested, had her writings - and herself - examined, and then gave her his positive encouragement to continue. The Spirit was speaking through her, he said.

Hildegard was by no means occupied only in receiving and recording visions. She built a new monastery near Bingen, to accommodate 50 nuns. It was well constructed, and had “water piped to all the offices.” Later she established a daughter monastery at Eibingen. As she grew in fame, Abbess Hildegard extended her contacts personally and by correspondence. Those who consulted her were St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Elizabeth of Schoenau, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, King Conrad III, ten archbishops, and many bishops, clergy and laity. As often as not, when she wrote to the high-placed, it was to pass on to them reproofs and prophecies she had received in her heavenly messages. She spoke frankly, for she was no respecter of persons.

Not all of her writings were devoted to revelations as such, but all of them were meant to edify. She composed the words and music of 70 hymns; wrote 50 homilies; authored a morality play or cantata; and in her leisure time even devised an international language similar to Esperanto. She also showed herself a keen observer of nature, and wrote two books on medicine and natural history. Plants, animals, and the human body and its ailments were her subject matter. In her comments on physiology she showed deep awareness, and she came close to discovering the circulation of the blood. She showed good psychological discernment, too. For instance, Hildegard cautioned against diagnosing as diabolical-possession types of behavior more likely attributable to physical and nervous disorders. Abbess Hildegard was not without her trials. Her physical weakness increased with age and she often had to be carried places. The vicar general also interdicted her church not long before her death. An excommunicated man had been buried in its cemetery, and the vicar general ordered the body removed. Hildegard declined to do so because it had been revealed to her that the excommunicate had indeed received the last sacraments. Fortunately, when her bishop returned to the diocese, he lifted the interdict.

With her mystical writings, this “Sybil of the Rhine” inaugurated the tradition of mystical writing for which the Rhineland became famous. Today scholars are even more interested in her work as a scientific pioneer. All in all, the “incomparable Hildegard” was one of the most remarkable of female saints in gifts and influence. She ranks with Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila and Bridget of Sweden as a woman who, in her own generation, acquired international importance.

 On May 10, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the liturgical cult of St. Hildegard to the universal Church, in a process known as “equivalent canonization”. On October 7, 2012, he declared St. Hildegard to be the 35th Doctor of the Church.  --Father Robert F. McNamara

Scripture (Song of Songs 8:6-7)

Set me as a seal on your heart,
  as a seal on your arm;
For stern as death is love,
  relentless as the nether world is devotion;
  its flames are a blazing fire.
Deep waters cannot quench love,
  nor floods sweep it away.
Were one to offer all he owns to purchase love,

  he would be roundly mocked.

 

Writings

(Year C). I again heard the voice from the living light say to me: These things that you see, are true, and as you see them, so they are, and there are more. And behold, I heard the sweetest and softest sound of a voice that was like tasting the dripping of balm say to me: I am the power of the Divinity, which was before eternity and before time and which did not even have a beginning in time, for I am the power of the Divinity by which God made all things that are to be discerned and probed, I am also the mirror of the providence of all things. I thundered with the strongest power as I sounded the word, of course, Fiat, through which all things proceeded. I also divided the time of times with seeing eyes, considering what things can be or how they can be. I licked my work with my mouth, clearly making a figure from slime, and I embraced this figure with love. And then with flaming breath, I changed this slime into flesh and gave the deeds of all creatures to it. After I had rested, I thought about how long and in what way man had been deceived through the counsel of the serpent. I then be came like aflame, and approaching the womb of the Virgin, I rested in it. I became incarnate in her flesh that had never given forth any filth, just as the flesh of Adam had originally been. And so I, a great giant, came forth with virtue greater than that of any other man since man did not sow me in the same way; the serpent had mocked the first man through the shattering of blood that is moved through the pleasure of the flesh. Because the devil had stripped man of his glory and had dragged man away from me, I wounded the devil and confused the suggestion of his deception with my legal precepts. After being born from the womb of the Virgin, I thought about man while I was being baptized and, therefore, washed the seed of man in the same water. As fire dries up water, I purged all things in this way. I turned my wheel until I renewed those who had been estranged. Because 1 had kissed the form of man that touched me, I formed a righteous union. Because I placed man over all the other creatures, I planned things in such a way as to hold them all together. Because I was born from the Virgin, I established the rule of virginity for man and woman with these having been separated. I also made a little hole in the middle of my wheel, through which I knew before hand that spiritual people who did not wear the clothes of the world could be victorious. I also perfected my wheel against the cunningness of the ancient serpent who did not know me since my incarnation had been hidden from him. The ancient serpent had seen Adam but had not known him fully; therefore he tried what he wanted to do and deceived him with his deeds. I, however, bound and destroyed the strong strength of the serpent with my humility, but he did not know me until I sat upon my judicial platform where I cortfused him completely. And I placed the ones who believe truly and have been truly cleansed and who are truly blessed here in the glory of paradise for the glory of heavenly things. (Book of the Rewards of Life)  
 

Musical Selection

 

O vis aeternitatis

que omnia ordinasti in corde tuo,

per Verbum tuum omnia creata sunt

sicut voluisti,

et ipsum Verbum tuum

induit carnem

in formatione illa

que educta est de Adam.

Et sic indumenta ipsius

a maximo dolore

abstersa sunt.

O quam magna est benignitas Salvatoris

qui omnia liberavit

per incarnationem suam,

quam divinitas exspiravit

sine vinculo peccati.

Et sic indumenta ipsius …

Gloria Patri et Filio

et Spiritui Sancto.

Et sic indumenta ipsius …

 

O power of eternity,

who have ordered all things in your heart:

by your word all things are created

as you have willed,

and your word itself

puts on flesh

in the form

that is drawn from Adam.

And so those garments

are wiped clean

by great pain.

O how great is the savior’s kindness,

who freed all things,

by that incarnation

which divinity breathed out,

unchained by sin.

And so those garments …

Glory be to the Father and to the Son

and to the Holy Spirit.

And so those garments …

 

Collect

 

Most glorious and holy God,
Whose servant Hildegard, strong in the faith,
was caught up in the vision of your heavenly courts: 
by the breath of your Spirit
open our eyes to glimpse your glory
and our lips to sing your praises with all the angels; 
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 
God, now and for ever.  Amen. (English Missal)

 

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