On
October 7, Pope Benedict XVI declared the 34th and 35th
official “Doctors of the Church”
—Hildegard of Bingen and John of Avila. The
latter was a crucial figure in the sixteenth century reform
of the Church. Hildegard, born in 1098 to a noble
family in what is now Germany, is more remote, but
extraordinarily compelling for her unique genius.
She became abbess of a
Benedictine monastery in Disibodenberg which, as it
grew, was moved to Bingen. There she graced the
Church as a philosopher, theologian, botanist, medical
scientist, and musician. She charted the orthodox
way through some of the more fantastic heresies and
enthusiasms afflicting the twelfth century, most
notoriously the Cathars. St. Bernard commended her
writing to Pope Eugenius III, who had been trained by him,
and after that she became well known beyond
Germany. Her musical compositions have become popular
in our own day, a vivid glimpse of liturgical chant at
the cusp of a golden age. She is the first
composer whose biography is known, and she may have written
the first opera — Ordo Virtutum. In it, the
Virtues sing angelic melodies while Satan only speaks, for
he cannot sing.
On the day she became a
Doctor of the Church, I recalled another musical Hildegarde
of our own day. Hildegarde Sell, born in 1906 to a
German-American family in Wisconsin, started the fashion for
some entertainers to use only one name, and she became the
most famous cabaret singer of her time as “The
Incomparable Hildegarde.” She first appeared in
films in 1933 and was the first person to sing on the new
medium of television in 1936. King Gustav VI of Sweden
and the Duke of Windsor were devoted to her, and she
was enshrined in song by George and Ira Gershwin. She
appeared on the covers of Time and Life
magazines, advertised as the most expensively dressed
celebrity of her day. Like her patron saint, she wrote
about herbal remedies, though she was more interested
in their cosmetic properties than was the Doctor of the
Church.
While The Incomparable
Hildegarde's signature song “Darling, Je Vous Aime
Beaucoup” will not be confused with St. Hildegard's
Ordo Virtutum, she was a Third Order Carmelite
and a daily communicant. She made a point of having the
best silks and satins of her wardrobe tailored into
vestments for the missions. St. Hildegard died at 82, a
great age in the Middle Ages, and our Hildegarde was 99, a
great age in any age. I visited her as she was dying in
a nursing home, where her one room was considerably smaller
than her ten-room suite at the Plaza. And instead of
her favorite Renoir, there was a small lithograph of
the Sacred Heart. She wore none of her famous line of
cosmetics as she said the Rosary, and she never looked
lovelier. She would have understood what her patroness
and Doctor of the Church said: “I am a feather on the
breath of God.”
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