SOURCE: Barbara Newman, "A Poor Little Female," in Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine, University of California Press, 1987, pp. 1-41.

In the following excerpt, which has been revised and updated by the author, Newman articulates Hildegard's worldview as depicted in the three books of her trilogy, describes her unique and obscure writing style and the nature of her extensive correspondence, and comments on her influence on the intellectual development of her protégée, Elisabeth of Schönau.

Hildegard's visionary oeuvre—rich, opaque, and unwieldy—is a phenomenon unique in twelfth-century letters; yet at the same time her books provide a compendium of contemporary thought. In the Scivias her emphasis is doctrinal; in the Book of Life's Merits, ethical; in the Book of Divine Works, scientific. But despite their differences in content, the three volumes of the trilogy bear one unmistakable impress. Hildegard's is a...