St. Hildegard of Bingen

Their story

Hildegard was born in 1098 in the Rhineland, in Germany, the tenth child of a noble family. From early childhood she saw visions of what she called "the living Light." When she was about eight, her parents entrusted her to a holy woman named Jutta, who lived as an anchoress attached to a Benedictine monastery. A small community of women grew around them, and when Jutta died in 1136, Hildegard became its leader. At the age of 42, Hildegard felt God commanding her to write down what she saw. Her first great book, Scivias, "Know the Ways," described her visions of God, creation and salvation. With the support of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the pope read her writings and encouraged her to continue. She founded a new monastery at Rupertsberg near Bingen and later a second one. She composed beautiful music, including one of the earliest known musical plays, and wrote books on medicine, plants and the natural world. She spoke often of viriditas, the green, life-giving power of God at work in creation. Hildegard was bold for a woman of her time. She traveled and preached, and she wrote letters to popes, emperors and bishops, calling them to reform and holiness. She died on September 17, 1179. Though long honored as a saint, she was formally canonized in 2012, when Pope Benedict XVI also declared her a Doctor of the Church.