22 September 2026

I have a copy of ‘The Times: Greatest Sermons of the Last 2000 Years’.  In it, there are eighty-five sermons altogether. All the big names are there – Jesus, Peter, Paul, Patrick and Francis, Knox, Bunyan, Wesley and Newman, Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King.

All the preachers are men except one. In this collection of eighty-five sermons, there is only one sermon which has been preached by a woman and that is Hildegard of Bingen.

The theme of her sermon is ‘The Devil’. It begins with one of her celebrated visions. She unpacks the detail in an  allegorical way. She makes important points about being wise to the devil’s wiles, resisting temptation and valuing the things of God.

It’s quite a remarkable achievement for one who didn’t start preaching in public until she was sixty years old. Despite bouts of prolonged ill-health, she made four preaching tours in twelve years, travelling within a 200km radius of Bingen.

‘I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man.’ writes St. Paul to Timothy. ‘She is to keep silent.’ For centuries, this text has effectively muzzled women in the Church. But not Hildegard. She felt compelled to teach and preach. Nothing could stop her!

During her lifetime, she had an enormous impact on the Church and the world especially in her native Germany. However, when she died she was largely forgotten for almost eight hundred years. When she died, canonisation procedures were started but they have never been completed! Pope Benedict named her a 'Doctor of the Church' in 2012.