ELIZABETH of SCHÖNAU was born near Bonn to an “ecclesiastical” family with a great-uncle a bishop, several relatives in monasteries or diocesan positions. At the age of 12 she entered the nearby Benedictine monastery at Schönau, which included both a women's and a men's community.

In her later teens, Elisabeth took her vows; when she was 23, she began to have visionary experiences, which at the direction of her abbot, she wrote down or dictated to her fellow nuns. Somewhat later, in about 1155, her brother Ekbert, who had been a canon in Bonn, joined the Benedictines and came to Schönau. Even before Ekbert's arrival, Elisabeth had come to believe that God wanted her visions shared with others; her abbot had preached the content of her early visions in area churches. However, it was apparently Ekbert’s “editing” of Elisabeth’s written reports of the visions that led to them being published “for the edification of the faithful.”

The extent of Ekbert’s influence is unclear: he and the abbot determined much of the content of Elisabeth’s later reports by giving Elisabeth questions to ask the spirits she saw (though sometimes she neglected to ask and sometimes the spirits declined to answer); however, a comparison of the writings made before and after Ekbert’s arrival suggests that the language and style of the works were chiefly Elisabeth’s. This is reinforced by a study of Ekbert’s own independent writings.

Except for a visit to Hildegard of Bingen at St. Rupert’s, Elisabeth appears to have spent the rest of her life at the Schönau monastery. As her reputation spread, she had many visitors and carried on a correspondence with monastics and others (22 letters have survived). At some point before 1157, she became magistra, the superior of the nuns (though under the authority of the abbot). Except for one letter, all of her datable writings are from before 1161.

Elisabeth’s works include three visionary journals (Libri visionem primus, secundus, tertius); parts of these were circulated in her lifetime, but not in their entirety. The three complete works that were circulated were these:

Liber viarum Dei (1157), which talks about the “ways of God” followed by men and women in various walks of life --- religious and lay --- and at various stages of life --- childhood, adolescence, widowhood. This work became standard reading in many men’s and women's monasteries over the next century.

Revelatio de sacro exercitu virginum Coloniensium (1157), in which Elisabeth reports on her questioning of the “sacred company of the virgins of Cologne”: an English princess, Ursula, and her companions. A great number of bones had been discovered in Cologne earlier in the century, and if these were indeed those of the martyrs, then there would be a great number of relics to be distributed. This was by far Elisabeth’s most popular work; since she “proved” that the relics were genuine, her report seems to have been wanted by every church and monastery that got a relic.

Visio de resurrectione Beate Virginis Marie (1159), which briefly describes Mary’s and an angel’s response to questions about a old controversy: whether Mary’s body had gone to heaven with her soul at her death. This work appears in at least one extant manuscript circulated before Elisabeth’s death and in several shortly after.

Elisabeth is not merely a clone of Hildegard of Bingen, though some of her images are surely influenced by Scivias. Like Hildegard, she sees herself as a servant of God on a mission rather than as a bride seeking mystical union in this life. Unlike Hildegard, she never allegorizes her visions into a theological whole; she simply sees and hears, and in later works asks questions, and then she reports the results to those who should act on them. Perhaps because of the lack of theological speculation, and judging from the number of extant manuscripts, Elisabeth’s writings were far more popular in her own time than were Hildegard’s.

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