Hildegard von Bingen probably created the Ordo Virtutum for the dedication of the convent she established at Rupertsberg, near Bingen on the Rhine River in Germany.  The work is the earliest extant liturgical morality play, and it is preserved in the "Riesencodex," a manuscript weighing about twenty-five pounds.  The work was probably first performed by sixteen of the fifty women living in the cloister, with the role of the Devil spoken by the monk Volmar.  Volmar was employed by the community to administer the sacraments to the nuns and, together with Richardis von Stade, one of the nuns, to act as Hildegard's secretary.

          Hildegard was born in 1098 the tenth child of Hildebert von Bermersheim and Mechthild.  By the age of five she had demonstrated extraordinary visionary powers, and at eight her parents dedicated her to the religious life at a Benedictine monastery.  She became abbess at thirty-eight, and continued to develop as an administrator, poet, musician, scientist, and mystic.  She was consulted by popes and kings and was greatly respected throughout western Europe.  She lived to be eighty-one years old, working productively until the end.