Fr. Hugh Feiss is a Benedictine monk, scholar, and Latin translator, and the author of 'Essential Monastic Wisdom'. Jo Ann McNamara is Professor Emerita of History at Hunter College and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and the author of 'Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia'.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098 - 1179) was the outstanding female religious figure of twelfth-century Germany. A Benedictine nun, she was consulted by bishops, popes, and kings, and wrote copiously for her fellow monastics: mystical and visionary material, liturgical music, biblical commentaries, saints' lives, and theological explanations of various aspects of church doctrine, as well as treatises on natural science and the healing arts. Her story is important to all students of spirituality, medieval history, and culture.