Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen (, ; ; c. 109817 September 1179), also known as the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath, active during the High Middle Ages as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner of the Catholic Church. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. A number of scholars have considered her to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany. Hildegard’s convent at Disibodenberg elected her as (mother superior) in 1136. She founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. Hildegard wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal works, as well as letters, hymns, and antiphons for the liturgy. There are more surviving chants by Hildegard than by any other composer from the entire Middle Ages, and she is one of the few known composers to have written both the music and the words. One of her works, the , is an early example of liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play. She is noted for the invention of a constructed language known as . Although the history of her formal canonization is compli