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Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) was a theologian, pastoral adviser, poet, monastic administrator, composer, preacher, and scientific and medical encyclopedist. Born into a noble family in Bermersheim in the Rhineland, at the age of 8 she was dedicated by her parents to the religious life. When she was 14 her parents formally bound her to the Benedictine community of St. Disibod, under the care of Jutta, a 20-year-old kinswoman who became the mistress of the small community of female recluses attached to that monastery (Orders and Congregations). After…

1. Julian of Norwich (ca. 1342-after 1416) was an English anchoress, visionary, spiritual guide, and theologian. In 1373, at the age of 30, she suffered a grave illness. Lying on her bed in the expectation of death, Julian had a series of visions that became the basis for her composition of theological texts. Little else is known of her life, although tradition has it that by 1394 she was an anchoress, probably at St. Julian’s church, Norwich (Anchorites). The MSS of Julian’s work transmit two different but related texts, which scholars refer to as the Short and the Long Text of The Revelatio…

1. Church History 1.1. Terminology In his theology of history Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202) referred to his own age as the media aetas (middle age) of the Son of God, between the past age of the Father and the coming age of the Spirit. Not until humanism, however, do we find the idea, albeit negative, of a period between antiquity and renaissance. Johannes Andreae of Aleria (1417–75) spoke of the media tempestas (middle time) in a 1469 letter. Christopher Cellarius (1638–1707), especially in his Historia medii…