September 17 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

event · BINGEN, Rhineland, September 17, 1179 AD

St. Hildegard dies at Rupertsberg with her nuns singing again

She built the monastery above the Rhine and ruled it for thirty years; for the past year her nuns had been forbidden to sing their prayers or receive Communion.

A medieval illuminated miniature showing a veiled nun, tongues of flame above her head, writing on a wax tablet; a bearded monk seated at a lectern writes in a book to her left, and a veiled nun stands watching to her right, under a red-roofed arcade. — St. Hildegard of Bingen writes as she receives divine inspiration, with a monk recording her words and a nun looking on, in a thirteenth-century miniature from the Lucca codex of her Liber Divinorum Operum.

Saint Hildegard of Bingen died before dawn today at the monastery she founded above the Rhine at Bingen, eighty-one years old, with her nuns around her. For about a year the churchmen of Mainz had forbidden her community to sing their prayers or receive Communion, over a grave she would not open. The ban was lifted a few months ago, and the nuns were singing again when she died.

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A Tudor gentleman in a black fur-collared gown and gold collar of esses stands in a riverside courtyard holding a folded letter, his travelling chests set down around him and two servants lifting a chest behind, the Thames flat and empty beyond. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of an oil and tempera panel by Hans Holbein the Younger, from the paper's reference portrait based on Portrait of Sir Thomas More (Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/1498-1543), 1527, The Frick Collection, New York (acc. 1912.1.77)) View source artwork.

profile · HAMPTON COURT, England, September 1527 AD

The King asks St. Thomas More if his marriage is lawful

King Henry VIII stopped Saint Thomas More in a gallery at Hampton Court this month, just home from an embassy in France, and asked him what he thought of the King's own marriage. Henry had a Bible brought and read out the passages he said proved the marriage unlawful. St. Thomas More answered on the verses and said nothing about the marriage.

4 min read

More in this edition

A medieval illumination of a nun with flames rising from her head, holding a wax tablet and stylus, standing in an arched doorway; behind her a tonsured monk looks through a window and a woman in a habit holds a book.

writings · DISIBODENBERG, 1136 AD

St. Hildegard writes a sung play in which Virtues fight the Devil

Saint Hildegard of Bingen, chosen this year to lead the nuns at Disibodenberg, has written a play to be sung, and she has been setting the feasts to music in these same years. Fifteen Virtues and the Devil fight over a single Soul, who asks for the shining robe she lost and then goes over to the Devil. The Soul comes back scarred, and the Virtues tie the Devil up.

4 min read

A medieval manuscript illumination showing St. Joan of Arc in white armour with a sword at her belt, standing before archers and soldiers who fire on a walled city gate defended by troops on the ramparts.

event · SAINT-DENIS, France, September 1429 AD

St. Joan lays down her armour at Saint-Denis and is marched south

Saint Joan of Arc, seventeen years old, was wounded in the thigh in the failed assault on Paris on September 8. Days later she laid a suit of white armour and a sword on the altar of the royal abbey at Saint-Denis. She would say at her trial that her voice had told her to stay there, and that the lords took her away against her will.

4 min read

A tempera panel showing a haloed young woman in white kneeling before an altar with a crucifix, reaching up to receive a lily branch from a group of haloed Dominican friars appearing above her in a golden radiance, with an open doorway to the right.

place · SIENA, Tuscany, 1362 AD

Siena dyer gives St. Catherine a room and calls off the match

Giacomo Benincasa, a cloth-dyer in the Fontebranda quarter of Siena, has given his fifteen-year-old daughter a small room under the house and told the rest of the family to stop trying to marry her off. St. Catherine, who vowed her virginity to Christ at seven years old, would not give the consent a marriage needs, and her father gave way first. She has begun her penances in the room, on a bed of bare boards with nothing over them.

4 min read

Today in the Church

Saint Robert Bellarmine, bishop and doctor of the Church (Optional Memorial); Saint Hildegard of Bingen, virgin and doctor of the Church (Optional Memorial)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, bishop and doctor of the ChurchOptional Memorial
Saint Hildegard of Bingen, virgin and doctor of the ChurchOptional Memorial

Saint of the day

Saint Hildegard of Bingen

Saint Hildegard of Bingen, a German Benedictine abbess, died in 1179 AD at the monastery she founded on the Rupertsberg above the Rhine. She wrote down her visions, composed music for her nuns, and was declared a Doctor of the Church in 2012 AD.

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On this day in the Church

1228 Pope Gregory IX granted St. Clare of Assisi the Privilege of Poverty at Perugia, confirming that no one could compel her sisters to accept possessions.Our report Source
1498 St. Hildegard of Bingen was entered in the Roman Martyrology under September 17 as a virgin of the diocese of Mainz, and from that entry the universal Church keeps her feast on the day of her death.Source
1904 On St. Hildegard's feast, Benedictine nuns from St Gabriel's at Prague entered the newly built Abbey of St Hildegard above Eibingen, returning Benedictine life to the place where her relics rest.Source
1918 The Capuchins at San Giovanni Rotondo kept the feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi; three days later the same wounds were given to St. Pio of Pietrelcina in that house.Source

Quote of the day

“Therefore, you and all prelates must exercise the greatest vigilance to clear the air by full and thorough discussion of the justification for such actions before your verdict closes the mouth of any church singing praises to God or suspends it from handling or receiving the divine sacraments. And you must be especially certain that you are drawn to this action out of zeal for God's justice, rather than out of indignation, unjust emotions, or a desire for revenge.”

— St. Hildegard of Bingen, Letter 23, to the prelates of Mainz, 1178 AD, Hildegard of Bingen, Letter 23, to the Prelates of Mainz (Latin and English)