Today the Church celebrates Saint Hildegard of Bingen, virgin and Doctor of the Church, one of the most extraordinary and multifaceted figures of the European Middle Ages. A 12th-century German Benedictine abbess, Hildegard was able to admirably embody the harmony between faith and reason, between mystical contemplation and concrete commitment in the world. Endowed with encyclopedic knowledge and extraordinary visions that she began to transcribe in the famous treatise ‘Scivias’, she was a theologian, scientist, naturalist, botanist, and refined musician. Her voice, defined as the ‘Sibyl of the Rhine’, did not stay within the confines of the monastery: she was, in fact, an authoritative spiritual and political advisor to Popes, bishops, and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa himself, admonishing the powerful of her time with evangelical courage. Proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012, Saint Hildegard continues to speak to contemporary man as a beacon of integral wisdom, reminding us that creation is a divine gift to be cherished with love and that the search for truth passes through the deep listening to the Spirit.
