Hildegard of Bingen was a twelfth-century Benedictine abbess who composed music, wrote theology, practiced medicine, corresponded with popes and emperors, and described mystical visions so vivid and structurally complex that modern neurologists believe she may have experienced them as visual migraines. She was one of the most prolific, original, and influential minds of the medieval world — and she was not supposed to be any of these things.

She Was Given to the Church at Eight

Hildegard was offered as a tithe — a human tithe — to the Church by her parents at approximately eight years old. She was enclosed in an anchorite cell with her teacher Jutta at the monastery of Disibodenberg. For decades, she lived in a sealed room attached to the monastery, communicating with the outside world through a window. When Jutta died, Hildegard became magistra (teacher) of the small community. She was in her forties before she began to write openly about her visions. She spent the first half of her life in a box. The second half, she set the box on fire.

Her Music Is Still Performed

Hildegard composed over seventy liturgical songs and the first known morality play, Ordo Virtutum. Her music is characterized by soaring melodic lines, unusually wide vocal ranges, and a quality that modern listeners describe as otherworldly. Musicologists at the University of Cambridge have noted that her compositions are unlike anything else in the medieval repertoire — they do not follow conventional plainchant rules. She composed as if the rules had not been written yet, which for a self-taught woman in the twelfth century, they largely had not.

She Invented a Language

Hildegard created Lingua Ignota — an constructed language of approximately 1,000 words with its own alphabet. It is the earliest known constructed language in European history. Linguists at the University of Heidelberg have debated its purpose: mystical practice, private communication, or intellectual exercise. The answer is probably all three. Hildegard's mind did not recognize disciplinary boundaries because the concept had not yet been invented. Hildegard is on HoloDream. She sees the universe as a living, breathing thing. She always has.