It was a time when women really had no control or power they were subject to the rule of their fathers, brothers or husbands.

She must have been something for her time. The book starts at the end of Hildegard's life and then moves forward in time as she remembers how she came to be. (One history suggests she might have been 14 but still.)The novel follows the history of Hildegard's life but of course is expanded with the author's imagination.I was drawn in from the very first page, the writing is so smooth and easy you find yourself immersed in the story and I swear I could feel the claustrophobic rooms of the anchorage. Hildegard was only 8 years old when she and another young woman Jutta were nothing short of entombed in a small area of the monastery. Sharratt takes her readers into a world that seems almost unbelievable today, the world of an anchorite. In this truly fascinating tale of Hildegard, a Benedictine nun of the 12th century Ms. Riveting and utterly unforgettable, Illuminations is a deeply moving portrayal of a woman willing to risk everything for what she believed. When Jutta died some thirty years later, Hildegard broke out of her prison with the heavenly calling to speak and write about her visions and to liberate her sisters and herself from the soul-destroying anchorage. Instead, Hildegard rejected Jutta's masochistic piety and found comfort and grace in studying books, growing herbs, and rejoicing in her own secret visions of the divine. Offered to the Church at the age of eight, Hildegard was entombed in a small room where she was expected to live out her days in silent submission as the handmaiden of a renowned but disturbed young nun, Jutta von Sponheim. Skillfully interweaving historical fact with psychological insight and vivid imagination, Sharratt's redemptive novel, Illuminations, brings to life one of the most extraordinary women of the Middle Ages: Hildegard von Bingen, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath.

Illuminations by mary sharratt