Category: Feast Day

Culinary arts? Creativity? The arts? The question of what Saint Hildegard is the patron saint of came up recently when I was asked where I first heard of Saint Hildegard as the Patron Saint of Creativity. In my documentary The Unruly Mystic: Saint Hildegard, I invited many of the interviewees to share whether they thought of her as the patron saint of creativity — and that framing became the gold standard in the final film. While I find it hard to believe I alone coined that phrase when I started making it, I do see that everything she did falls under what I call the pursuit of creativity.

The Loyola Press puts it plainly: “Actually she is not an official patron saint of anything — which may be a good thing, because to think of Hildegard merely as a patron saint is to gloss over her profound capabilities and influence.” And yet the same source notes that her recipe for “Cookies of Joy” is still used today, with Hildegard encouraging bakers to eat them often: “They will reduce the bad humors, enrich the blood, and fortify the nerves.” So is Saint Hildegard the patron saint of culinary arts as well? The question keeps expanding the more you look at her life.

When you ask the question slightly differently — who is the patron saint of the arts? — you arrive at another remarkable nun, St. Catherine of Bologna. A fifteenth-century cloistered woman who lived and died in relative obscurity, she doesn’t seem the most obvious choice. Yet a closer look reveals a saint whose creative spirit, mystical visions, and struggle with doubt make her deeply relatable to artists working today. She painted, she wrote, she composed — and she did it all from inside a monastery wall.

Scholars and religious communities have shown renewed interest in the guide she wrote for novices, The Seven Spiritual Weapons. One of those weapons might speak most directly to artists: in exhorting her sisters to trust in God, she writes, “to believe that alone we will never be able to do something truly good.” That humility — the acknowledgment that creativity flows through us rather than from us — is a posture both saints share.

The intersection of faith and art continues to generate surprising destinations. The St. Catherine of Bologna Arts Association of Ringwood, New Jersey holds an annual exhibition called “A Little Bit of Soho in Ringwood,” timed to the weekend nearest St. Catherine’s March 9th feast day. It draws hundreds of artists and thousands of visitors. On the 600th anniversary of her birth, the theme was “Celebrating the Light That We Are” — a phrase that could as easily describe Hildegard’s entire life’s work.

Pope Benedict spoke of St. Catherine with words that resonate equally for Hildegard:

“From the distance of so many centuries she is still very modern and speaks to our lives. She, like us, suffered temptations — of disbelief, of sensuality, of a difficult spiritual struggle. She felt forsaken by God, she found herself in the darkness of faith. Yet in all these situations she was always holding the Lord’s hand. And walking hand in hand with the Lord, she walked on the right path and found the way of light.”

All of which returns us to St. Hildegard as patron saint of creativity. If you are an artist, a musician, a writer, or anyone who has ever struggled to trust what you see and know — why not ask her for support in your own work?

Here is a prayer invoking her inspiration:

Dearest St. Hildegard, let thy gracious prayer be for this: that in all things, we serve God in bringing souls, including our own, to Him, and delightfully so. Let righteousness enfold hearts moving in and moved by the arts. Let thanks be our joyous cry, our victory shout, our honoring trumpet blast, with gratitude that our Creator gave us the sensibility to know and love Him; that He let us love as He loves, forgive as He forgives; and leads us to be as perfect in purity as He is. Actualize all our divinely-granted potential, St. Hildegard, for the chief end of uniting as the flock of our Good Shepherd, wisely using every gift He has given us. Amen.

I would invite you to watch the film and draw your own conclusions — or better yet, let the people in it speak for themselves.