A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

the canonization and doctorization of hildegard 309
person. On August 26, 1326, among various indulgences he conceded to
the Rupertsberg monastery, he included the “festum sanctae Hildegardis”
on September 17. This makes John the fijirst Pope ever to refer to Hildegard
with the term “saint.”7
Hildegard’s relics have long been the objects of devotion, and they
were the subject of an elevatio or formal exhumation in 1489 by the local
bishop, Berthold of Henneberg. In 1584 Cesare Baronio published his
highly influential Roman martyrology, setting the cults of saints in a single
volume for the use of clerics and laity alike; here, likely inspired by
Berthold’s act, he unmistakably lists Hildegard as a saint.8
In the century following the publication of Baronio’s martyrology,
the indefatigable Bollandists Gottfried Henschen and Daniel Papebroch
visited the relics of Hildegard.9 On their return to their society’s headquarters,
they not only included Hildegard in their monumental Acta
Sanctorum,10 but they went so far as to make clear their belief that a papal
canonization was lacking solely due to the poor execution of the process
by the initial inquisitors.11 Not only did Hildegard thus enter the scholarly
world’s understanding of sanctity, but it may have been a factor in the
way that Pope Clement XIII, on December 23, 1767, referred to her as a
saint when decreeing that the faithful who would visit the church of “Saint
Hildegard” from the evening of September 16 to sunset on September 17
would receive a plenary indulgence.12
Although the cult of Hildegard continued to thrive in Germany, there
appears to have been little activity at the papal or curial levels for the
7 This, according to “De peracta Canonizatione aequipollente Hildegardis Bingensis,”
Acta Apostolicae Sedis 104, n. 11 (November 2012), p. 865. I have not been able to fijind the
primary source.
8 Caesarius Baronius Soranus, Martyrologium Romanum ad novam kalendarii rationes
et ecclesiasticae historiae veritatem restitutum (Rome, 1584), p. 362: “Apud Bingiam in
dioecesi Moguntinensi sanctae Hildegardis virginis.”
9 Acta Sanctorum, ed. Michael Cnobarus (Antwerp, 1680), Maii III, “De sancto Ruperto
duce Bingae in dioecesi Moguntina et b. Bertha eius matre,” Prefatio, 9, col. 504B: “Nos
anno 1660 fuimus in ipso sanctae Hildegardis monasterio et inter reliquias eius cor adhuc
integrum sumus venerati.”
10 Acta Sanctorum, ed. Bernardus Albertus Vander Plassche (Antwerp, 1755), Septembris
V, cols. 629–90.
11 “Sanctae Hildegardis natales, res gestae, scripta” (preface), PL 197:89B–C (Paris, 1855):
“Solemnis canonizatio, quae facile fijieri potuisset, si primi delegati ad causam examinandam
accuratius processint, nunquam est peracta.”
12 Helmut Hinkel, “St. Hildegards Verehrung im Bistum Mainz,” in Hildegard von
Bingen 1098–1179. Festschrift zum 800. Todestag der Heiligen, ed. Anton Brück, Quellen und
Abhandlungen zur mittelrheinischen Kirchengeschichte 33 (Mainz, 1979), pp. 385–411
(p. 400, n. 154).