Hildegard of Bingen

Lived

1098–1179

Era

Medieval

Where

Rhineland

Tradition

Roman Catholic

Visions, medicine, and music unlike anyone else's

A Benedictine abbess who had experienced visions since childhood and began, at forty-two, to write them down, having received the approval of the pope to do so. She founded two houses, corresponded with emperors and popes, and preached publicly on four tours at an age when few travelled at all.

Why it matters

She wrote theology, a morality play, two books on medicine and natural history, and a body of music that sounds like nothing else of its century — soaring far beyond the usual chant range, and now widely recorded. Her authority is worth noting precisely: a woman in the twelfth century who told Frederick Barbarossa he was behaving badly, and was heard.

All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.