Hildegard of Bingen was a Benedictine abbess, as well as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner, living in 12th century Germany. She is one of the best-known composers of simple single-instrumented sacred music while at the same time regarded by many scholars as the founder of scientific natural history.

Hildegard was born around 1098, and, as a child, experienced both poor health and extensive religious visions, which started when she was only 3 years old. At the age of 14, she was enclosed in the convent in Disibodenberg, in Rhineland-Palatinate, near Mainz, as a member of a community of women attached to a monastery of monks. She was elected Mother Superior in 1136.

Hildegard and approximately 20 nuns requested to be able to move to a simpler monastic life at the St. Rupertsberg monastery, some 40 km from Disibodenberg. But her request was denied by the Abbot at Disibodenberg and not granted until 1150, when she was deeply unwell and the Abbot agreed to her request.

On 17 September 1179, when Hildegard died, her sisters said they saw two streams of light appear in the skies and cross over the room where she was dying.

Regional calendars of the Catholic Church have listed her as a saint for centuries. But only on 10 May 2012, did Pope Benedict XVI extend the liturgical cult of Hildegard to the entire Catholic Church, and 6 months later, on 7 October 2012, named her a Doctor of the Church, in recognition of "her holiness of life and the originality of her teaching."

In recent years, Hildegard’s life has become of particular interest to feminist scholars, who recognise how she used reference to herself as a member of the weaker sex to gain recognition and at a time and in a place where few women were permitted a voice. She has also become a figure of reverence within the contemporary New Age movement, mostly because of her holistic and natural view of healing, as well as her status as a mystic.