46 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



Hortus Deliciarum Garden of Delights and Matilda and 

 Gertrude, those remarkable mystical writers, whose de- 

 scriptions of heaven and hell so closely resemble those in 

 the Divina Commedia that many writers are of the opinion 

 that the great Florentine poet must have been familiar 

 with the accounts which they gave of their visions. 



St. Hildegard was for a third of a century the abbess of 

 the convent of St. Rupert at Bingen. So great was her 

 reputation for sanctity and for the extent and variety of 

 her attainments that she was called "the marvel of Ger- 

 many." She is without doubt one of the most beautiful 

 and imposing as well as one of the greatest figures of the 

 Middle Ages great beside such eminent contemporaries 

 as Abelard, Martin of Tours and Bernard of Clairvaux. 

 People from all parts of the Christian world sought her 

 counsel ; and her convent at Bingen became a Mecca for all 

 classes and conditions of men and women. But nothing 

 shows better the immense influence which she wielded than 

 her letters of which nearly three hundred have been pre- 

 served. 



Among her correspondents were people of the humble 

 walks of life as well as the highest representatives of 

 Church and State. There were simple monks and noble 

 abbots; dukes, kings and queens; archbishops and cardi- 

 nals and no fewer than four Popes. Letters came to her 

 from the orient and the Occident, from the patriarch of 

 Jerusalem, from Queen Bertha of Greece, from Frederick 

 Barbarossa, Philip the Count of Flanders, St. Bernard, 

 the professors of the University of Paris; from Henry II 

 of England, and from his grand-daughter Eleonora, "The 

 Damsel of Brittany. " It is safe to say that no woman 

 during the Middle Ages exercised a wider or more benefi- 

 cent influence than did this humble Benedictine abbess of 

 Bingen on the Rhine and had unsought so large a number 

 of distinguished correspondents. And, if we accept the 

 criterion that influence is measured by the number and 



