St. Robert Bellarmine and St. Hildegard of Bingen

On September 17 the Church permits the commemoration of either St. Robert Bellarmine or St. Hildegard of Bingen — two Doctors of the Church whose memorials fall on the same day, one a Jesuit cardinal of the Counter-Reformation, the other a Benedictine abbess of the twelfth century.

St. Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) was born in Montepulciano, Tuscany, the nephew of Pope Marcellus II. He entered the Jesuits in 1560, taught theology at the University of Leuven from 1570 to 1576 — the first Jesuit to teach there — and was called to the Roman College (now the Gregorian University) by Gregory XIII to lecture on polemical theology. His De Controversiis, four volumes on the controversies between Catholics and Protestants, became the standard Catholic manual for a century. Created cardinal by Clement VIII in 1599, he served as Archbishop of Capua from 1602 to 1605. In 1616, on Paul V's orders, he summoned Galileo, notified him of the Index decree condemning Copernican doctrine, and ordered him to abandon it. He died in Rome on September 17, 1621, and his relics are enshrined in the Church of Sant'Ignazio. He was canonized by Pius XI in 1930 and declared a Doctor of the Church. He is patron of catechists and canon lawyers.

St. Hildegard of Bingen (c. 1098-1179), the "Sibyl of the Rhine," was a German Benedictine abbess, mystic, composer, and polymath. Born at Bermersheim, she was entrusted to the care of Blessed Jutta of Sponheim at the monastery of Disibodenberg, became magistra in 1136, and in 1150 founded the Rupertsberg monastery near Bingen on the Rhine; in 1165 she established a daughter house at Eibingen across the river. She wrote the visionary works Scivias, Liber Vitae Meritorum, and Liber Divinorum Operum; composed over seventy liturgical songs and the Ordo Virtutum, the earliest known morality play; wrote on medicine and natural science; and invented a language, the Lingua Ignota. She corresponded with popes, emperors, and bishops, calling the Church to reform. Her writings were approved at the Synod of Trier in 1147, with St. Bernard of Clairvaux's endorsement. She died on September 17, 1179. Benedict XVI canonized her in 2012 and proclaimed her a Doctor of the Church on October 7, 2012 — the fourth woman so named. The modern Eibingen Abbey (Abtei St. Hildegard) stands on the site of her foundation and is the chief pilgrimage site of her memory.