Hildegard of Bingen
1098-1179

This remarkable Christian nun lived in twelfth century Germany. One of her modern biographers described this "visionary, poet, composer, naturalist, healer, and theologian" who "founded convents; corresponded with secular and ecclesiastical leaders, as a vast range of people of lesser rank; and ventured forth as a monastic trouble-shooter, consultant exorcist, and visiting pracher" as a woman of her time who produced written work that ranged from natural history and medicine to cosmology, music, poetry, and theology. This extraordinary body of work "surpasses that of most other male contemporaries; it also possesses great beauty and witnesses to Hildegard's intellectual power."