ABSTRACT
The monasteries and convents were as important to the intellectual life of twelfth-century Europe as were the developing universities. Those religious houses contained both scholars seeking the reconciliation of faith and reason and contemplatives who emphasized the nonrational and mystical elements of Christianity. For example, both the academic Peter Abelard and the mystic St. Bernard of Clairvaux, his adversary, were monks. The cloister was also one of the few places where women could get an education, write, and assume positions of intellectual leadership. Among the leading nuns who wrote during this period was the mystic, Hildegard of Bingen.
