Hildegard was born about 1098 at Bermersheim near Alzey in the Rhineland-Palatinate, of noble parents Mechtild of Merxheim-Nahet and Hildebert of Bermersheim. Sickly from infancy and traditionally counted the youngest of their children, she later testified that from earliest childhood she beheld "the Shade of the Living Light." At a tender age her parents offered her as an oblate to the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg. She was placed under the care of the anchoress Jutta of Sponheim; together they were enclosed, and on All Saints Day 1112 Bishop Otto of Bamberg received their vows. Jutta taught her to read and write and to recite the psalms; Hildegard also learned handiwork, care of the garden and the sick, and the beginnings of sacred music. In 1115 she made her religious profession.
From youth she experienced visions that multiplied with the years, yet she long kept silence out of humility, confiding only in Jutta, who told the monk Volmar. After Jutta's death in 1136 the sisters unanimously elected Hildegard magistra of their community. Abbot Kuno wished her to remain prioress under his authority; she sought greater independence and leave to move the nuns to Rupertsberg. When he refused, she obtained the approval of Archbishop Henry of Mainz. Still opposed, she was struck by a paralysis she attributed to God's will that the move take place. Only when the abbot himself could not lift her did he yield. About 1150 she and some twenty nuns settled at Rupertsberg near Bingen; Volmar served as provost, confessor, and scribe. In 1165 she founded a second house for her nuns at Eibingen.
In 1141, at about forty-two, she received a command from God to write what she saw and heard. Hesitating still, she fell ill until, aided by the noble maiden Richardis von Stade and by Volmar, she began Scivias ("Know the Ways"). Over ten years she set down the heavenly visions, not by invention of her own heart but as mysteries received from God. Between November 1147 and February 1148 at the synod of Trier, Pope Eugenius III heard of her writings and gave papal approval that she record them as revelations of the Holy Spirit. She went on to compose further theological works, letters, hymns and antiphons, poems, botanical and medical treatises, and the liturgical drama Ordo Virtutum; she also devised the constructed language called Lingua Ignota and supervised the illuminations of the Rupertsberg Scivias manuscript. More of her chants survive than those of any other medieval composer; she wrote both words and music.
Despite frail health she undertook many journeys to ecclesiastical and political leaders, bearing witness to the Word of the Lord and promoting the Christian faith. Popes and bishops, kings and princes esteemed her; the common people likewise sought her counsel. She shone especially in persevering obedience, simplicity, charity, and hospitality, drawing her life from Scripture, the liturgy, the Fathers, and the Rule of Saint Benedict, and placing her keen intelligence wholly at the service of belonging to the Lord. When Richardis was elected abbess elsewhere, Hildegard pleaded that they not be parted, yet accepted the separation; after Richardis's holy death she cherished her with divine love. Near the end of her life the clergy of Mainz demanded the removal from sacred ground of a man buried at Rupertsberg who had once been excommunicated; Hildegard refused, affirming that he had been reconciled before death and that to cast him out would be sin.
On 17 September 1179 she died at Rupertsberg and was buried there. Her sisters reported that two streams of light appeared in the sky and crossed over the room where she lay dying. Relics are kept at the convent of Eibingen, which she had founded. Regional calendars long honored her as a saint. On 10 May 2012 Pope Benedict XVI extended her liturgical cult to the universal Church by equivalent canonization; on 7 October 2012 he proclaimed her Doctor of the Church, recognizing the holiness of her life and the originality of her teaching. Blessed John Paul II had already called her "light of her people and of her time."
May Saint Hildegard obtain for us a share in her courage to write and live what God shows, and let us practice today the persevering obedience that kept her wholly the Lord's.
