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she seems to have read reforming contemporaries, such as Hugh of Saint Victor and Bernard of Clairvaux, as well as earlier Christian classics, such as the Shepherd of Hermas and Adso's On the Antichrist . . . and there are strong suggestions that she had access to Greek (and perhaps to Arabic) medical works and even to arcane rabbinical treatises.

It's tragic that Hildegaard was locked up in that monastic cell, instead of going to public school and being forced to learn about homosexuality instead.

As for Cahill, there's no hater of the Church and Catholics quite like an ex-Catholic. Most are like him—Marxists who try to explain everything that happens in terms of power and politics, at least where religious people are concerned.

What you see here, and at virtually all the big-name Catholic universities, is strutting, irreligious "scholars" who are obsessively afraid of prayer and sacrifice. They show a consuming hatred of those not as venal, comfortable, and self-interested as they are.

Hildegaard of Bingen, a sane, accomplished, and faithful Catholic, went on to become an abbess, as well as a world-renowned scholar. She corresponded with the greats of her time, and would have had no patience for a small-time intellectual onanist like Cahill.