Thinkers Timeline

Hildegard of Bingen was a German nun, writer, composer, and healer. She was one of the most important thinkers in medieval Europe. She was born in 1098 in a small village in what is now western Germany. Her family were minor nobles. She was the tenth child. At that time, some families gave a child to the Church. This was called a 'tithe', a kind of gift. Hildegard was sent to a small group of religious women when she was about eight. She lived with an older woman called Jutta. Jutta taught her to read and write Latin. Hildegard spent almost her whole life in religious houses. She never travelled far in the usual sense. But her ideas travelled across Europe. From childhood, Hildegard said she saw bright lights. She called these visions. She thought they came from God. For many years she did not tell anyone. She was afraid people would laugh at her. When she was about 42, she finally began to write them down. Her first book, Scivias, took ten years to finish. The Pope himself read parts of it and said it was good work. After Jutta died, Hildegard became the leader of her small group. She then founded a new house for women at Rupertsberg, near the River Rhine. Later she founded a second house at Eibingen. She wrote books on God, on medicine, on plants, and on music. She composed many songs, which are still performed today. She wrote nearly 400 letters. Kings, popes, and abbots asked her for advice. She died on 17 September 1179, aged about 81. The Catholic Church made her a saint in 2012, over 800 years after her death.

Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a German friar, theologian, and biblical scholar whose objections to Catholic practice became the catalyst for the Protestant Reformation — a movement that reshaped European Christianity, politics, and culture, and whose effects continue to the present day. He was born at Eisleben in Saxony on 10 November 1483, the son of Hans Luder, a copper miner who eventually became a small mine owner, and Margarethe Luder. His father intended him for a legal career and sent him to study at the University of Erfurt, where he completed a master's degree in 1505. In July 1505, caught in a thunderstorm, he was thrown from his horse and vowed to Saint Anne that he would become a monk if she saved him. Two weeks later, against his father's wishes, he entered the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt. He was ordained priest in 1507, completed a doctorate in theology at Wittenberg in 1512, and was appointed professor of biblical studies at the new University of Wittenberg, where he remained for the rest of his life. His extensive study of scripture — particularly Paul's letter to the Romans — combined with his own spiritual struggles produced the theological breakthrough that would become the foundation of Protestant Christianity. On 31 October 1517, he sent a letter with his Ninety-Five Theses — academic propositions for debate, originally intended to challenge the sale of indulgences — to his archbishop; whether he actually nailed them to the church door at Wittenberg is uncertain. The theses spread rapidly through new printing technology, and what began as a scholarly dispute became a European crisis. In 1521 he refused to recant before the Diet of Worms, was excommunicated, and was sheltered at Wartburg Castle by his prince Frederick the Wise, where he translated the New Testament into German. He married Katharina von Bora, a former nun, in 1525; they had six children. Over the following twenty-five years he wrote extensively — biblical commentaries, sermons, treatises, hymns, and the Small and Large Catechisms. He died in 1546 at Eisleben, the town of his birth. His legacy is deeply contested. He transformed European Christianity, made the Bible broadly accessible in German, and articulated principles that would shape modern ideas about conscience and authority. He also produced shockingly anti-Jewish writings in his later years that provided material for subsequent antisemitic use, and his political theology helped legitimise the brutal suppression of the 1524-1525 Peasants' War. Engaging honestly with Luther requires holding both dimensions of his legacy together.