Herrad, abbess of Hohenburg Abbey, compiled the Hortus Deliciarum between 1167 AD and 1185 AD as a teaching manual for the nuns and novices in her convent (New World Encyclopedia, n.d.). This work is considered one of the first encyclopedias written by a woman, and it survives through hand copies made before the original was destroyed in the 1870 Strasbourg library fire. Herrad directed most of the manuscript’s illustrations herself, including this folio, which shows Lady Philosophy enthroned at the center of a wheel. She’s crowned with Ethics, Logic, and Physics, with the seven liberal arts arranged around her, while Socrates and Plato sit at her feet.
This page uses a wheel diagram that functions much like a modern chart or infographic (World History Encyclopedia, 2020). What stands out about this piece, in terms of gender, is that philosophy, the highest authority in the diagram, is drawn as a woman, while the two named, historically real thinkers she rules over, Socrates and Plato, are men seated beneath her. This was illustrated in the midst of the Church, which was actively narrowing what women were allowed to do. For example, the 11th and 12th centuries saw a redefinition of ordination that stripped women of clerical roles they had previously held, such as deaconess and abbess-as-presbytera (Macy, 2008). So Herrad was compiling and directing a work of theology and philosophy while not being ordained or credentialed for it. In other words, this acts as an example of how patriarchal rulings and laws influenced the stagnancy of design, being a male-dominated field, even though women have proven that their gender did not provide a barrier to producing high-quality work.
