Illuminations - Tapa dura

A triumphant portrait of a resilient and courageous woman and the life she might have lived . . .

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.

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. 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. 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. Riveting and utterly unforgettable,Illuminations is a deeply moving portrayal of a woman willing to risk everything for what she believed.

“With elegance and sensitivity, Mary Sharratt rescues Hildegard von Bingen from the obscurity of legend, bringing to life the flesh-and-blood woman in all her conflict, faith, and unwavering tenacity.Illuminations is an astonishing revelation of a visionary leader willing to sacrifice everything to defend her beliefs in a dangerous time of oppression.”
—C. W. Gortner, author of The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“Mary Sharratt has outdone herself with Illuminations, where she brings one of the most famous and enigmatic women of the Middle Ages to vibrant life in this tour de force, which will captivate the reader from the very first page.”—Sharon Kay Penman, author of the New York Times bestseller Time and Chance

“There is ecstasy in the writing of this redemptive novel of a twelfth-century woman who found a world of cruelty and filled it with beauty, a powerless woman who discovered her own power and led other women to find their own. Illuminations is a radiantly beautiful book.”—Stephanie Cowell, author of Marrying Mozart

“Illuminations is a thrilling adventure of the heart and mind, the richly told story of a woman fully of her time and yet courageous beyond the bounds her time expected of her.”—Margaret Frazer, author of the Dame Frevisse medieval mysteries

“It is easy to paint a picture of a saint from the outside but much more difficult to show them from the inside.—Margaret George, author of Mary, Called Magdalene

“Sharratt’s wonderful novel about the amazing, too-little-known saint, Hildegard von Bingen, a mystic and visionary, brings to life a time of vast sins and vast redemptions.”—Karleen Koen, author of the best-selling Through a Glass Darkly