science. Above all, they
preserved for us the old medical books and carried on medical traditions
of practice. The greatest surprise has been to find that this was true
not only for the monks, but also for the nuns.

One of the most important books on medicine that has come to us from the
twelfth century is that of a Benedictine abbess, since known as St.
Hildegarde, whose life was spent in the Rhineland. Her works serve to
show very well that in the convents of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth
centuries there was much more of interest in things intellectual than we
have had any idea of until recent years, and that, indeed, one of the
important occupations of convent life was the serious study of books of
all kinds, some of them even scientific, as well as the writing of works
in all departments. The century before St. Hildegarde there is the
record of Hroswitha, who wrote a series of dramas in imitation of
Terence, that were meant to replace, for the monks and nuns of that
period, the reading of that rather too human author. Hroswitha, like
Hildegarde, was a German, and we have the record, also, of another
religious writer, abbess of the Odilian Cloister, at Hohenberg, who
wrote a book called "Hortus Deliciarum, the Garden of Delights," a book
of information on many subjects not unlike our popular encyclopedias of
the modern time, the title of which shows that the place of information
in life was considered to be the giving of pleasure. While this work
deals mainly with Biblical and theological and mystical questions, there
are many purely scientific passages and many subjects of strictly
medical interest treated.

The life of the Abbess Hildegarde is worthy of consideration, because it
illustrates the period and makes it very clear that, in spite of the
grievous misunderstanding of their life and work, so common in the
modern time, these old-time religious had most of the interests of the
modern time, and pursued them with even more than modern zeal and
success, very often. Her career illustrates very well what the
foundation of the Benedictines had done for women. When St. Benedict
founded his order for men, his sister, Scholastica, wanted to do a
similar work for women. We know that the Benedictine monks saved the old
classics for us, kept burning the light of the intellectual life, and
gave a refuge to men who wanted to devote themselves in leisure and
peace to the things of the spirit, whether of this world or th