A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

the canonization and doctorization of hildegard 315
pletion of the positio, saying that Hildegard was soon to be canonized
and doctorized.24 The curia soon formally agreed that Hildegard would
be canonized; indeed, even though the positio was not completed until
January 31, 2012, it took less than two months for the cause to be examined
and approved by the cardinals and bishops who met on March 20,
2012, and at the plenary session of the Congregation, held on May 10, 2012,
there was a unanimous vote in favor of offfijicially canonizing Hildegard.
These formal meetings and votes were efffected with the knowledge that
the canonization dossier did not contain the usual quantity and quality
of physical cures that are normally demanded for present-day processes.
These people did know, however, of a mode of canonization that would
allow for Hildegard to be offfijicially declared a saint by the Pope regardless
of the situation concerning miracles.
The mode in question is known as “equivalent canonization.” It has
efffectively existed since the time of Pope Urban VIII, who reigned from
1623 to 1644, but entered into normal praxis thanks to the writings of Prospero
Lambertini, who would from 1740 to 1758 rule the Church as Pope
Benedict XIV. In his monumental work on the beatifijication and canonization
of saints, Lambertini says that the Pope may declare someone to be
canonized if a number of factors are fulfijilled—primarily that the saint has
been venerated from the time of his or her death until the present day,
but, for whatever reason, there was never completed a formal canonization
process closer to the time that the holy person in question had lived.
Examples given by Lambertini of saints who had been canonized in this
manner include Romuald; Norbert; Bruno; Pietro Nolasco; Felix of Valois;
Margaret, Queen of Scotland; Stephen, King of Hungary; Wenceslas, Duke
of Bohemia; Pope Gregory VII; and Gertrude the Great.25 Later equivalent
canonizations can be witnessed in the cases of, e.g. Cyril and Methodius,
Cyril of Alexandria, Augustine of Canterbury, Albert the Great, and Margaret
of Hungary.
24 See, for example, the authoritative tweet (https://twitter.com/romereports/status/
147631310389776384, accessed 25 August 2013) that was sent at 10:57 a.m. on 16 December
2011 by the international news agency “Rome Reports”: “Pope to canonize and name Hildegard
of Bingen as Doctor of the Church http://bit.ly/s8fuAJ.” (This last web site, accessed
25 August 2013, points to a fuller article by the same organization.)
25 See Prospero Lambertini, De Servorum Dei Beatifijicatione et Beatorum Canonizatione,
tome 1, vol. 2, ed. Vincenzo Criscuolo (Vatican City: Libreria Vaticana, 2011), pp. 9–88. See
also the fundamental study by Fabijan Veraja, “La canonizzazione equipollente e la questione
dei miracoli nelle cause di canonizzazione,” Apollinaris 48 (1975): 222–245, 475–500;
49 (1976): 182–200.