Life Begins at 42: Saint Hildegard’s Guide to Becoming a Midlife Powerfrau
We live in a youth-obsessed culture. The cosmetic industry pushes wrinkle creams and hair dye on us while celebrities resort to Botox and surgery to preserve an illusion of eternal girlhood. We live longer than ever before, yet advancing age, once a mark of honour, has become a source of shame. But what happens when women embrace midlife as an inner awakening and call to power? One such woman was Saint Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), powerfrau and late bloomer par excellence. Her youth was dire. Offered to the Church at the age of eight, she was entombed in an anchorage. Though she...
Read MoreHildegard comes home
Hildegard’s vision of Sapienta, Divine WisdomMy final revision of my new novel, ILLUMINATIONS: A NOVEL OF HILDEGARD VON BINGEN, are complete. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish the novel in November 2012, just in time for the next US presidential election. HILDEGARD FOR PRESIDENT, PLZ!!! I’ve been working on this novel since 2008 and it feels wonderful to finally bring my homage to this very complex and inspiring woman to fruition. Here’s a report about my 2009 pilgrimage to Bingen and Disibodenberg in Germany.Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), Benedictine abbess and...
Read MoreWomen & the Crusades: guest post by Nan Hawthorne
Today’s guest post is by Nan Hawthorne, whose new novel Beloved Pilgrim explores the Crusade of 1101 from the perspective of a woman who went off to fight. During my own research of Hildegard von Bingen, I uncovered this short description of female crusaders from the Disibodenberg Chronicles, written by the monks of the abbey of Disibodenberg where Hildegard lived from the age of eight as a child anchorite:Not only men and boys, but many women also took part in this journey. Indeed females went forth on this venture dressed as men and marched in armour . . .–From the...
Read MoreResearch trip to Bingen, Germany
I just returned from Rhinehessen where I was tracing the path of medieval powerfrau Hildegard von Bingen, the subject of my current novel-in-progress. Here are some pictures.Hildegard was born of a noble family in the village of Bermersheim near Alzey. Nothing remains of her family home, but here is the view of the village church:At the age of eight, according to most sources, her parents offered her, their tenth child, as a tithe to the Church. Hildegard was sent to the remote monastery of Disibodenberg where she was enclosed in an anchorage with Jutta von Sponheim, a noblewoman only seven...
Read MoreAbout Mary Sharratt
An American author living on the Silver Coast of Portugal, Mary Sharratt is on a mission to write women back into history. She is the author of Revelations and seven previous critically acclaimed novels, including Daughters of the Witching Hill, the Nautilus Award–winning Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen, The Dark Lady’s Mask: A Novel of Shakespeare’s Muse, and Ecstasy, about the life, loves, and music of Alma Mahler. When she is not writing, you can find her riding her beautiful Welsh mare.
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