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Hildegard of Bingen
1098 - September 17, 1179
born in Bemersheim, Germany, composed during the Medieval period
Biography
In the summer of 1098, a child was born to noble parents in Bermersheim, near Alzey, in modern-day Rheinhessen, and was christened Hildegard. By her own account, she was having visions at the age of five; her parents placed her in the care of a small nunnery when she was eight. Over an 81-year life-span, this remarkable woman would go on to lead the Abbey at Disibodenberg, and found two further convents of her own; she wrote three major theological works and a number of shorter treatises on natural history, herbalism, and healing, as well as the first surviving morality play and a large number of hymns and sequences. Her correspondence gave counsel and advice to many of the most prominent figures of her time, even to Frederick Barbarossa himself. She performed healings and a celebrated exorcism, and -- an extremely rare privilege for a woman -- took several officially sanctioned public preaching tours.

Hildebert and Mechtild, her parents, had promised this (their tenth child) to the Church's service, and gave the precocious 8-year-old as novice to Jutta of Spanheim, who led a small cell of nuns attached to the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg, near Bingen and the cathedral town of Mainz.
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