Imagine a 12th-century resume that includes inventing an original language, composing rule-shattering melodies, authoring medical texts, and writing blistering letters scolding emperors, archbishops, and popes. It belongs to Hildegard of Bingen, a cloistered nun who experienced intense cosmic visions while fully awake and became one of the most influential women of the Middle Ages.

This deep dive traces how a sickly child, offered to the church as an oblate, transformed into a powerhouse polymath in a society that excluded women from education, clergy, and public authority. From her election to lead her community to founding an independent monastery, Hildegard leaned into divine authority and the theology of the "empty vessel" to make herself undeniable.

• Visions she described as the "shade of the living light," experienced from a ...