Hildegard von Bingen
Scientist, feminist, musician, saint

Hildegard von Bingen saw many visions during her life—sights, sounds, tastes and smells she believed were messages from God. She called these visions “the shades of the living light” and kept these divine messages to herself, understandably, until age 42, when God sent her a more pointed message, “Write down what you see and hear.” In Scivias, her first volume of mystic theology, von Bingen describes her reluctance to share her gift:

“But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses, and by the witness of a certain noble maiden of good conduct [the nun Richardis von Stade] and of that man whom I had secretly sought and found, as mentioned above, I set my hand to the writing. While I was doing it, I sensed, as I mentioned before, the deep profundity of scriptural exposition; and, raising myself from illness by the strength I received, I brought this work to a close – though just barely – in ten years. (...) And I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, ‘Cry out therefore, and write thus!”