Benedictine nun, visionary, mystic, poet, musician and naturalist, Hildegard of Bingen was one of the most extraordinary figures of the Middle Ages. At the age of sixty she undertook four preaching tours through the German empire, a venture almost unheard of for a woman, and she was consulted not only by her religious contemporaries but by kings and emperors. Hildegard is largely remembered for her apocalyptic and visionary writings, but this selection of her work reveals her to be a wide-ranging thinker who speaks of many of the issues that concern us today: the relationship between human beings and the natural world, mutuality between men and women, and the importance of a holistic approach to life.
