Hildegarda

Hildegard of Bingen was born in Bermersheim, in southern Germany, in 1098. Frail and ill, those attending the delivery predict that she will not last overnight. But she will survive, and this will be but one of the milestones of her prodigious existence. Since she was little, she had visions of her, and at the age of ten she was confined in a convent. In addition to being a poet, composer, biologist, and mystic, she invented natural medicine and beer as it is made today, and she was the first person to write about the female orgasm. This nun of high birth, who would be nicknamed the Sibyl of the Rhine by thousands of her followers, was in charge of the Bingen monastery; she created an order of nuns dressed in white and without a veil, who during prayers danced in circles with flowers in their hair; she rubbed shoulders with the nobility, and she risked her life in defiance of the Church and even Emperor Barbarossa.