Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Virgin and Doctor of the Church

Hildegard was born in 1098 at Bermersheim in the Rhineland and as a child was given to the care of the recluse Jutta at the monastery of Disibodenberg. In 1136 she succeeded Jutta. From the age of 42 she wrote down, with the help of the monk Volmar, the visions she said she had had since childhood, in the book Scivias. About 1150 she moved her nuns to the Rupertsberg near Bingen and later founded a second house across the Rhine at Eibingen. She composed music, among it the sung play Ordo Virtutum, wrote on medicine and natural history, corresponded with Bernard of Clairvaux and Frederick Barbarossa, and went on preaching journeys. She died on 17 September 1179. In 2012 Benedict XVI extended her cult to the whole Church and declared her a Doctor of the Church.