Hildegard of Bingen OSB, also known as the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner of the Catholic Church during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. A number of scholars has considered her to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.