Hildegard of Bingen
1098 — 1179 · Feast day: September 17
A Benedictine abbess and polymath born in the Rhineland in 1098, Hildegard experienced visions from childhood and, at forty-three, received a divine command to record them. She founded two monasteries, corresponded with emperors and popes, composed more surviving chants than any other medieval composer, and wrote on theology, medicine, and natural science — the range captured in her epithet 'Sibyl of the Rhine.'