Benedictine Woman to be Doctor of the Church

           During the last weeks of 2011 pundits have had a grand time raising our hopes and anxieties by forecasting trends for 2012. My favorite forecast came from the Vatican, announcing on December 16, that in October 2012, Pope Benedict XVI plans to canonize Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), a Benedictine abbess from the 12^th century, and make her the fourth woman Doctor of the Church. In Germany and the Benedictine order Hildegard has been considered a saint for centuries, and since 1940 her feastday has been celebrated on September 17. You can read more about the long and convoluted attempts to canonize Hildegard at the following link http://www.churchhistory.org/blogs/blog/2011/12/19/behind-the-elevation-of-st-hildegard/ by Barbara Newman, noted Hildegard scholar.

            Hildegard was complex woman—a visionary, a prophet, writer, composer, philosopher, naturalist, preacher in a time when to be a woman and to be engaged in any one of those activities would be astonishing. Known as the Sybil of the Rhine, she was consulted by bishops, abbots, kings, emperors. She moved her community from Disibobenberg to Ruperstberg in spite of the opposition of the monks at Disibobenberg and built a new monastery. She undertook three preaching tours, ending the third one at the age of 73. She was fierce in her public condemnation of lax and sinful priests.

            In 1998 there was a great burst of interest and writing about Hildegard because it was her 900^th year. 2012 will also see a great burst of interest in her. Googling “Hildegard of Bingen” will take you into reams and reams of documents on her. If you want to start with a very brief chronology, summary, discography and bibliography of Hildegard, please email me at sdhosb@yahoo.org and I can give you a start

.  Sr. Deborah Harmeling, OSB