After her death, the mortal remains of Hildegard of Bingen were buried at an unknown place. Perhaps they then had already been in the crypt in front of the high altar in the monastery church of the Rupertsberg or they were transferred there later. On the order of the Berthold of Henneberg, Archbishop of Mainz (1484-1504), the grave was opened in 1489 and 1498. At the first opening it was hoped to find a canonization certificate, and at the second, where also Abbot Trithemius of Sponheim and „Hildegard worshipper“ was present, her remains were raised. This emphasises the worship of Hildegard as a Saint.

After the Thirty Years’ War broke out, the Abbess of that time saved parts of the relics (head, heart and tongue) and brought it to Cologne. The rest could be saved without being damaged from their hiding place in the crypt after a fire destroyed the Rupertsberg Monastery. As their monastery was not reconstructed, the nuns of the Rupertsberg joined the convent in Eibingen, where they were reunited with the relics of Hildegard. In the new building of the monastery church of 1683, they received a dignified repository. The Eibingen Monastery was also not spared from the secularization at the beginning of the 19th century, which resulted in the fact that the relics were passed to the hands of several trustworthy people, such as the Priest of Eibingen, its provost and several former nuns. In 1831, they were handed back to the former monastery church which at that time was used as parish church by the Eibingen community.

From 1840, Priest Ludwig Schneider was the head the community and decisively contributed to the fact that the Hildegard cult flourished again. After receiving permission from the Mainz Archbishop Peter Joseph Blum, he, together with a doctor from Bingen and other witnesses, examined Hildegard’s mortal remains in 1852. Up to 1857, Priest Schneider wrote a comprehensive report to the bishop in which he proved the authenticity of the relics. In the same year, permission for public worship was granted and on 17 September, the relics were carried through the streets of Eibingen in a ceremonial procession at the reintroduced Hildegardis Festival. In 1929, an ornate shrine was built for the mortal remains, in which they have been kept ever since in the parish church of Eibingen. As the worship of Hildegard has spread throughout the whole world, not only many monasteries and churches in Europe received particles of the relics, but also those in America, Israel, Japan, Papua New Guinea and on the Bahamas.