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It feels as though St. Hildegard of Bingen has taken the Catholic world by storm since her canonization 12 years ago.
Heralded as an icon and a role model for women in particular, this bold and brilliant woman seems to have exploded out of the Middle Ages into the 21st century.
But at least a few people might be wondering, “Why on earth wasn’t she canonized before now? She died in 1179, for crying out loud." That’s a lag time of 831 years before she was declared a saint.
Her works have been read, studied, and performed throughout all these centuries; surely the Church knew about her before 1978, when the German bishops petitioned that she be declared a Doctor of the Church.
So why wasn’t she canonized already?
There have been a few rumors swirling around about why the Church waited so long to canonize her. Was there some kind of conflict or drama behind the reason she wasn’t canonized?
A few years before her canonization, I learned about St. Hildegard in a college class. I recall my fellow students getting into quite the conversation about why this extraordinary woman wasn’t declared a saint.
Some thought perhaps she was too controversial of a figure, as she was known to pointedly criticize religious and secular leaders she thought were failing in their Christian duties. She especially fiercely opposed the practice of simony.
Others speculated that it was because of that pesky interdict. An interdict is basically a mass excommunication, and Hildegard’s came about when she butted heads with the local bishop shortly before she died. The Catholic World Report shares the story:
So with her feast day today, I was curious to find out why exactly she wasn’t canonized for so long. Was there any substance behind the things my classmates and I wondered about all those years ago?
The real reason
It turns out that none of our speculating was true. There wasn’t any conflict or drama or ulterior motive behind St. Hildegard’s exclusion from the official canon. The real reason she wasn’t canonized is something incredibly random, so unexpected it sounds almost silly.
The reason is something that would be an easy fix today, but was an intractable problem in the 1200s. In 1243, the paperwork documenting her cause for canonization was lost en route to Rome. Once lost, it was gone for good.
There were no back-up documents, no extra copy saved on someone’s hard drive. The lost papers had all the information needed to open her cause for canonization. With its loss, her cause fell by the wayside for over 800 years.
Pray Tell reports,
So that’s the real reason: No drama, no scandal, just an incompetent inquiry and the all-important papers lost forever.
As frustrating as this story is to read about, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a certain wisdom behind the timing. The recent canonization of St. Hildegard has coincided perfectly with an era of new leadership for women in the Church.
Perhaps there’s a greater purpose behind those papers getting lost all those centuries ago, as so many of us have been reintroduced to St. Hildegard right when we need her. In fact, Pope Benedict spoke of the timeliness of her canonization:
We are grateful for Hildegard's luminous witness, just as much now as when she lived.
St. Hildegard, pray for us!
