A Benedictine cloistered nun visited by visions expressed in the beautiful illuminated manuscripts reproduced in this volume, the founder of a religious community, a musician and composer whose works have been rediscovered in our own time and are now enjoying a tremendous popularity, a writer and poet, a naturalist and healer, and a preacher and adviser to the Pope and his Bishops, Hildegard is essential to our understanding of the twelfth century.

Medieval historian Regine Pernoud draws on Hildegard's work and on her correspondence with saints, popes, emperors, and commoners to create a portrait of a woman that Matthew Fox has called "one of the greatest artists and intellectuals the world has ever seen."