Hildegard’s achievements are even more remarkable when we consider that she was blazing a trail as one of the first women visionaries of the medieval period. While others would rise to prominence as mystics in the fourteenth century, during the twelfth century female visionaries were not common.32 The Second Lateran Council of 1139 made the independence of women in the church more problematic, since the enforced separation of monastic communities led to the strict enclosure of nuns.
