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The Medieval Church · c. 1146–1179
The Letters
Hildegard of Bingen · 1098–1179
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What it is
Nearly four hundred letters to popes, emperors, abbots, and ordinary people, rebuking Frederick Barbarossa and defending her nuns' right to bury an excommunicate.
Why it lasted
The record of how a twelfth-century woman exercised authority: by speaking as a voice she claimed was not her own.
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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