Hildegard von Bingen

📍Bermersheim vor der Höhe, 55234 Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

“I was born around 1098 in Bermersheim in the Rhineland, the tenth child of a noble family who offered me to the church as a tithe. I was given as a companion to the anchoress Jutta von Sponheim at age eight. When Jutta died I became head of the community. I experienced visions throughout my life — I called them the living light — and was instructed to write them down. The Scivias, the natural history writings of Physica, and seventy-seven musical compositions of the Symphonia were the fruits of a visionary life that the medieval church found extraordinary. I founded two monasteries on the Rhine. I died at eighty-one, one of the most prolific and original minds of the twelfth century, contained within the walls of a women's religious community.”

Sources: Flanagan, S. Hildegard of Bingen: A Visionary Life (1989), Routledge; Newman, B. Sister of Wisdom (1987), University of California Press