Saint Hildegard of Bingen was born in the year of 1098 in the castle of Böchelheim on the River Nahe. Hildegard specific birthdate is unknown. She was born the tenth child in from her father, Hildebert and her mother, Mechtildis. Her family was very noble. At the age of 8, her family could not support her, so she was given to an anchoress name Jutta. From there and forward she would receive a religious education and live the religious life that would soon develop her into a nun. From this age, she was spent in the Benedictine house. During this time she began to experience visions and illnesses. Some of the visions she would have included bright lights, sound of symphonies, and figures that would appear.
While living in the Benedictine House she had the opportunity to learn how to read musical notation; learn German and some Latin from Jutta; and she exposed to going to service at least eight times a day. Jutta taught Hildegard basic education, and from there she learned to read Psalter in Latin. Because of Hildegard’s grammatical errors, she would have the help of her lifelong secretaries, Jutta and Volmar (another monk), to write down her visions. Her visions later inspired her to write music.
In the year of 1136, when Hildegard was about 38 years of age, Jutta died and Hildegard was elected to lead the women of Disibodenberg. Despite of Hildegard’s visions it did not stir the women to not vote for her. As her role as head continue to grow and flourish, by her 42nd birthday her visions had continued to grow on her as well. She began to see images, hear voices, and sometimes was unable to move. Because of her visions she was called forth to write and teach everything that she saw and heard. She describes the vis...
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While Eleanor was married to King Louis VII, Louis and Eleanor joined the second crusade and met up with Eleanor’s handsome uncle Raymond (Au, p.1). Louis began to notice Eleanor growing closer to Raymond (Au, p.1), so he forced her to go along with him to capture the Holy Land in Jerusalem, fearing an eventual love affair (Au, p.1). After the failed trip to Jerusalem, the pair went back to France, where Eleanor fell out of love with her husband. Even though the pope forbade them from dissolving the marriage (Goodman, 2013, p.3), she still found a way to divorce Louis, announcing that her marriage couldn’t be legal in God’s eyes since they were cousins (Au, p.1). Their marriage was annulled, and all of Eleanor’s property was then returned to her following medieval custom (Au, p.1). Hildegard of Bingen was the complete opposite in terms of how she went about achieving her goals, holding a religious authority’s opinion in the highest respect. Since Hildegard was especially concerned about sharing her visions because she lived in a period when the Church was torn apart by heresy, she didn’t want to do anything to label herself as a heretic (Hildegard of Bingen, 2015, p.1). With the permission of the abbot of St. Disibod, Hildegard began to write her vision down (Ferrante, 2014, p.1). Before she published it, it was approved by a papal commission named by Pope Eugene III, at the instigation of her archbishop, Henry of Mainz (Ferrante, 2014, p.1), and with support of Bernard of Clairvaux, who she had written to for advice (Delahoyde, Hildegard of Bingen, p.1). Eleanor always had her eye on the future, and didn’t allow her bad marriage with Louis to hold her back from further political influence. Just 2 months after she
Gluckel of Hamlin, was not just a regular housewife, thought to be like other women in the 17th century, but she was also a business women, who showed that not only men controlled the economy. She was born in to a Jewish family in Hamburg, Germany in 1646. Due to religious persecution her family moved to Hamlin, Germany. She was betrothed at age twelve to Hayyim Hamel and was married at age 14. Gluckel gave birth to fourteen children, two of whom, a two-week old infant son and a three-year old daughter, died prematurely. Gluckel was an active partner in her husband’s business, which consisted of trading jewelry and stones and giving out loans and t...
Works Cited: http://members.ll.net/ken/hunter3.html Ozment, Steven. The Burgermeister's Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth –Century German Town. New York: Harper Perennial, 1996. Print.
This is a small example of how Einhard was a very educated man and in other accounts he was highly regarded as a poet. Einhard was not only skilled enough to write on Charlemagne, he was almost obligated to do so. After a quick summary of some of the highlights of Einhard’s career the introduction to The Life of Charlemagne says,
What was the predominant image of women and women’s place in medieval society? Actual historical events, such as the scandal and subsequent litigation revolving around Anna Buschler which Steven Ozment detail’s in the Burgermeisters Daughter, suggests something off a compromise between these two literary extremes. It is easy to say that life in the sixteenth century was surely no utopia for women but at least they had some rights.
Some may think that Hildegard is treated, at times, too harshly for her visions. Hildegard finally decides to express her visionary gift, but unfortunately, she is not openly shown ecstatic emotions. She confides in her friend, Volmar, and is greeted with the proper expressions of excitement and enthusiasm. She is also greeted with these expressions from Abbot Kuno, although slow to show at first but eventually persuaded into enthusiastic reviews. However, when a council of monks inspects the products of her gift, she is met with skepticism and denial. These emotions are mainly brought up because of her gender. Many may believe this is reinforced with the lines: “You’re saying that you can understand, but we can’t?”; “To claim to hear secrets that prophets were denied? Outrageous!”; “Only the Holy Father can judge her case”; and “She will probably be expelled from the Church as a heretic!” Not only
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In his essay, “The Pessimism of Many Germanic Stories,” A. Kent Hieatt says of the poem Beowulf:
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