Will the Real Hildegard von Bingen Please Stand up? It's Replicas All the Way Down

A year ago, I received a fascinating email from a stranger. The stranger was a man who had recently traveled with his wife to visit family in Germany and had decided to visit Bingen with the expectation of seeing the original paintings made by Hildegard herself in the twelfth century. However, the man had found Hildegard to be "quite elusive!" The paintings were nowhere to be found. There were…