Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen

by Mary Sharratt

  In that gleaming I saw a maiden shine in such splendor that I could hardly look at her, only catching glances like fragments from a dream. Her mantle, whiter than snow, glittered like a heaven full of stars. In her right hand she cradled the sun and moon. On her breast, covering her heart, was an ivory tablet and upon that tablet I saw a man the color of sapphire. A chorus rose like birdsong on an April dawn—all of creation calling this maiden “Lady.” The maiden’s own voice rose above it, as achingly beautiful as Jutta’s singing.

  I bore you from the womb before the morning star.

  I didn’t know whether the maiden was speaking to me, lost and wretched, or to the sapphire man in her breast. My vision of the Lady was lost, but her voice lingered. You are here for a purpose, though you don’t understand it yet.

  Barefoot and mother-naked, I found myself within a greening garden so beautiful that it made me cry out. Each blade of grass and newly unfurled spring leaf shimmered in the sun. Every bush and tree was frothy with blossoms and heavy with fruit at the same time. In the midst of that glory, the Tree of Life and its jeweled apples winked at me, and yet I saw no serpent. The Lady’s voice whispered: See the eternal paradise that has never fallen.

  I saw a great wheel with the all-embracing arms of God at its circumference, the Lady at its heart. Everything she touched greened and bloomed.

  Pealing bells wrenched me back into this world. The monks were ringing in Christmas morning. I lay on my pallet, the blankets piled over me, my legs swaddled in damp cloth. Above me hovered a maiden with glowing blue eyes. Her veil had slipped and the sun shone through her halo of cropped auburn curls. Whispering my name, she held out a blossoming apple branch, each pink and white flower redolent with the scent of the Eden I had glimpsed.

  Jutta kissed my brow.

  “At last you’re awake! You lay in a fever for three days and nights. I found you half-frozen in the courtyard. Were you sleepwalking, child? I must bolt that door firmly so it never happens again. What if I’d lost you?”

  Sweat trickled down my face. I was too weak to lift my head from the pillow. All seemed unreal: Jutta, dazzling even in her sackcloth, held the Barbara Branch that flowered at Christmas just as Volmar had promised.

  Beside my bed was a tureen of soup that had gone cold, but Jutta warmed it over the brazier and then she fed me, spoonful by spoonful.

  “The fast is over, child. Tonight, if you’re well enough, there will be a feast delivered to us. Brother Volmar said there will be river carp and quail. And apple cake with nuts and currants.”

  “Volmar.” This was the first word to pass through my lips after emerging from that otherworld where I had lain for three days and nights. “You talk to him through the screen?”

  “Of course! You were ill. I had to ask him to bring food that would help the sick. Volmar ran to the infirmary and came back with damp cloths for me to wrap around your legs to lower the fever.”

  Jutta flushed when she said his name.

  So Volmar isn’t just my secret friend. He whispered through the screen to Jutta. Could he see her beautiful face through the slatted wood, see how her long eyelashes beat like butterfly wings against her creamy skin? What if his kindness to me had only been a ploy to woo her, the holy and aristocratic anchorite? Weren’t they the same age, Volmar and Jutta? Jutta’s nightmares of her brother made her writhe and shudder, yet Volmar was as different from Meginhard von Sponheim as a boy could be. And I, Hildegard, was destined to come in a poor second, to live forever in Jutta’s shadow.

  “You were dreaming three days long,” Jutta said. “And such dreams they must have been—you were raving, my child.”

  She kept calling me that. Child. But in those three days and nights, I felt I had grown impossibly old. My childhood had been lost forever, stolen from me the moment they bricked me in here.

  Jutta bent close, her face prickling with concern. “If you’re having . . . visitations of any sort, you might be prey to demons, Hildegard. You must confess everything to Prior Cuno and be shriven of your sins.”

  Were my visions evil, then? Did Jutta, the girl who starved and beat herself, who thought that demons lurked in every shadow, think that I was the crazy one? My heart raced in terror that she might be right.

  “Don’t cry, little sister,” she said, calling me by the special name Volmar had given me. “I have a surprise.”

  She bustled to the other side of the chamber and returned with a bundle that looked like an infant tucked in a lambswool blanket.

  “This is my gift to you.” Jutta placed it in my arms as carefully as though it were a baby of flesh and blood.

  Staring down at the doll’s wooden face, I wished I had the strength to hurl it across the room. Who did Jutta think she was, imprisoning me here, stealing away my only friend, leaving me with nothing but the visions that kept exploding inside my head? The final insult was trying to win my affection with some stupid toy.

  “I’m too old for dolls,” I told her, not hiding my contempt.

  She flinched as though I had slapped her. “It’s not a plaything, child. It’s meant to represent the baby Jesus. Volmar said it’s customary to give young female oblates dolls for this purpose.”

  “I don’t need a doll.” Sinking back into my bed, I closed my eyes, allowing the ghost of my vision to envelop me—the maiden holding within her beating heart the sapphire man with his arms outstretched. I bore you from the womb before the morning star. Was it truly Mary and Jesus I had seen, or some demonic illusion?

  “We must pray to him, our heavenly Bridegroom,” Jutta said. “Let his image fill your heart.”

  The sapphire man regarded me with Volmar’s gentle eyes. He held out his ink-stained scribe’s hands. You are here for a purpose. If only I knew what that was.

  Later that day came Volmar’s gift—an illuminated volume of the lives of the virgin martyrs. Jutta took it from the hatch, her face alight, and, sitting by my bedside, read to me in a voice as smooth as damask. I wanted to hate her, stop my ears, and tell her to go boil herself, but the stories and pictures were so beguiling that they soon caught me in their thrall.

  “Let me have the book,” I begged, anxious to pore over every illumination.

  When Jutta retired to the outer room to lose herself in contemplation, I threw the blankets off my body, tore the damp rags from my calves, and tottered around on shaky legs. I was bored with being an invalid.

  Muffled footsteps on the other side of the screen made me rip open the shutters and glare into Volmar’s face.

  “Hildegard! You must be feeling better.”

  “Did you expect to see Jutta instead? Shall I fetch her for you?”

  “Don’t disturb her prayers, child.”

  Child! How that word rankled me.

  “Do you like the book? I picked it out just for you.”

  “For me?” I folded my arms in front of myself and glowered. Not for her?

  “Did you see the picture of Margaret of Antioch slaying the dragon? She looked so fierce and determined that she reminded me of you, little sister.”

  His words fell on my bitterness like sunlight on snow, melting it clean away. I grinned at him. My favorite part of Saint Margaret’s story was when she was trapped inside the dragon’s belly and she crossed herself, causing the dragon to explode.

  “Volmar, where do visions come from?”

  “Holy prophecies are sent by God. Then there are delusions sent from hell, though I pray we will be delivered from such things. Why do you ask?”

  “I see things,” I whispered, praying Jutta wouldn’t hear. “Jutta says I must confess.” In all honesty, I wondered how long I could stand to carry this burden alone.

  “I’m not fit to receive your confession, Hildegard. I’m not yet ordained. Let me fetch the prior.”

  “No,” I begged him. “Please. You’re the only one I trust.”

  I wished the floor would open up and swallow me.

  “Tell me if you must, but remember I’m
only a novice and a scribe.”

  “Are you my friend?” I dared to ask him.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then promise not to tell a soul. Even Jutta.”

  My lips to the screen, I whispered of my vision of the maiden at the center of the wheel of creation, all of life springing from her. God, on the outside of the wheel, contained her just as she contained Christ in her body.

  Volmar was silent a long while. I was about to creep away in humiliation when he finally spoke.

  “A powerful vision indeed for one so young. Are you sure you don’t want to tell Prior Cuno?”

  “Don’t tell him, Volmar. You promised.”

  “So I did and I’ll keep my word. But why can’t you talk to Jutta about this?”

  “She’ll think I’m mad—or wicked. Do you?”

  “No, Hildegard. Let me find you some more books. Maybe if your mind’s fully occupied, you won’t be so troubled by these things.”

  I thanked him before quietly closing the shutters. Then I sank to the floor, my heart rattling sickly. Volmar possessed a heart full of kindness. He did everything in his power to help me, yet even he regarded my visions as trouble.

  That Christmas Day we shared a rare feast of carp, quail, and apple cake. Bright-cheeked, Jutta spoke of the brand-new sewing needles her mother had sent her along with a letter filled with news of home. My magistra told me of every single thing that had transpired in Sponheim in her absence, yet she never once mentioned her brother.

  “Did anything come from my mother?” I asked in a small voice.

  Jutta shook her head. “Sorry, child. No.”

  My tears splashed down on my half-eaten piece of carp. Mechthild—that was how I thought of her now—had truly washed her hands of me. I even wondered if Rorich still kept me in his heart.

  “Come, child.” Jutta cupped my chin and raised it, smiling into my eyes. “This is no day for weeping. Tomorrow I want you to write the First Psalm in Latin. Do you think you can do that?”

  Swiping at my eyes, I nodded. Mechthild had never learned to write even her own name.

  That night after Compline, the golden orb came floating, bearing inside it that loving face I had beheld my first morning in the courtyard. The motherly face in the orb was different from the maiden I had glimpsed, but she was every bit as shining, as full of Living Light that flowed outward, wrapping around me until I quivered, hugging my knees to my chest. Mother. I wasn’t pining for the woman who had birthed me and then forsaken me; I was crying out to God. I turned to God and called her Mother, my true Mother who would cherish me as Mechthild never had.

  She began to speak: I am the supreme fiery force who kindled every living spark. I flame above the beauty of the fields. I shine in the waters. I burn in the sun, moon, and stars. With the airy wind, I quicken all things. For the air is alive in the greening and blooming. The waters flow as if alive.

  4

  VOLMAR WAS MY SHINING sun, my guardian angel, offering me the most precious gift of all, the outside world. He fed my undying hunger with the books that I gradually learned to read on my own without Jutta’s help. He also brought me tender young plants dug up from the forest floor, wet earth still clinging to their roots. In the spring of the year, he gifted me with seedlings of medicinal herbs. Woodruff that bloomed sweetly in a cloud of delicate white flowers. Lady’s mantle that gathered raindrops resembling liquid diamonds in her pleated leaves. Chamomile with its golden flowers that soothed the stomach. Motherwort that banished nightmares. Valerian that stank like something rotten yet had the power to quieten Jutta’s nerves when she was too overwrought to sleep.

  Each plant I watered with care, shifting its pot by the hour to make the most of the sparse sunlight angling down into the anchorage courtyard. I prayed over the herbs, my voice ringing so fervently that Jutta accused me of loving those common weeds more than God. But I kept murmuring my psalms to the plants. If I couldn’t escape to the forest, I would plant this wild meadow inside our very enclosure, tend it as best I could. Such a miracle of greening unfolded before my eyes, seedlings shooting into full-fledged plants, moist and luscious, full of growing power that seemed to conquer everything empty and stale. Soon the plants outgrew their small pots, and I begged Volmar for more earth and bigger vessels, the largest he could squeeze through our hatch. How I adored the rich loamy smell of soil on my hands. How Jutta despaired of me, grubbing in the dirt like a serf. The courtyard became a lush grove with wild grapevine climbing the walls, feverfew and thyme growing between the cobbles.

  Continuing my education, Jutta taught me the Latin prayers of the Divine Office and all one hundred and fifty psalms. I kept confusing virgo with virga until virgin and branch became one and the same. Almost every day the floating orbs appeared, but I had learned not to speak of them, for they were as unwelcome in the monastery as they had been in my mother’s house.

  In August, only weeks away from the ninth anniversary of my birth, I made ready for the Feast of the Assumption. Dancing around my garden sanctuary, I prayed to Mary, viridissima virga, the greenest branch, who made my plants grow so tall and beautiful. In the floating orbs, I saw the shining maiden at the axis of a great wheel, sitting still and majestic at the center while the wheel spun around her. I smuggled precious crumbs to the courtyard. Holding them in my cupped palms as an offering, I hummed softly until a wild mourning dove flew down to peck the morsels from my hand, her feathers fanning my wrists. Part of me flew with her as she winged away into the forest. Part of me walked beneath those rustling woodland boughs and breathed that pure air, my soul blessed by so many living things.

  The first summer of our captivity passed and then the second. Jutta seemed happy, or at least as content as a melancholy girl could hope to be. Her name, uttered with reverence, was on every monk’s lips. The glory of Disibodenberg, holy Jutta sat at her screen, otherworldly in her loveliness, and chanted her benedictions to the stream of pilgrims who eased the monotony of our days. Her reputation as a beauty remained undiminished, her new life as a recluse only adding to her mystique.

  The magnitude of her sacrifice—interring herself alive to serve God and others through her prayers—seemed to prove that she wielded extraordinary powers and could work wonders on behalf of many, that her blessing and counsel were more potent than all the prayers and Masses offered by the monks. While men who became anchorites were usually priests or monks of many years’ standing before they made this final, irrevocable act of renunciation, female anchorites came straight from the world, pitching themselves into holy seclusion without first having had to climb the rungs of hierarchy. And so the pilgrims held us in awe as beings set apart.

  Rumors spread that Jutta lived on water and air. So pure and undefiled, she was free of the shame of monthly bleeding. Pilgrims from as far away as Trier walked barefoot over hills and through forests, fording rivers and swamps to seek an audience with their holy woman. Wealthy supplicants heaped endowments on Disibodenberg to win my magistra’s good favor while the poor begged for her intercession and mercy, as though a few murmured words from her could protect them from famine and plague. Kneeling outside our screen, matrons and maidens poured out their hearts’ sorrows to Jutta as though she could cure their every malady and turn their woe to weal.

  But saintliness was no easy yoke to bear. The more Jutta’s holy reputation flourished, the harder she struggled to embody it. It hardly mattered if it was Ash Wednesday or Easter Sunday—she ignored the feasts to embrace her fasts until her skin grew as translucent as the inside of a snail’s shell. Hunger lent her such a fragile, delicate grace, rarer and more refined than the ruddy glow of good health. But it left her chilled even on the most sweltering days of high summer. Clutching a blanket over her sackcloth, the holy maiden awaited her next lot of pilgrims.

  Once a week Prior Cuno sought an audience with Jutta. He whispered to her in a voice so low and strangled that, as hard as I strained my ears, I couldn’t catch a word. Once, bringing Jutta a cu
p of water, I contrived to glimpse the prior’s face through the screen. As he gazed at my magistra, he seemed entranced—more like a lover than a monk, reminding me of the way the moon-faced village boys used to gawp at my beautiful sisters.

  As I grew older, I would understand that before Jutta’s arrival, the monks of Disibodenberg had gone years on end without laying eyes on a living woman, let alone one so lovely. Even at that age, I knew without anyone telling me that Jutta was the most exquisite creature ever to grace this remote abbey: a lady of the high aristocracy who had renounced her fortune and every comfort to join the Benedictines, her crystalline voice soaring with the brothers in song. Even imprisoned in our anchorage, Jutta bloomed like a rare damask rose, her exotic fragrance inflaming every soul inside these monastery walls.

  Cuno treated her with reverence, as though convinced that Jutta was indeed a living saint. My magistra’s life, I knew, followed the pattern laid out in the hagiographies. None of the celebrated virgin martyrs were born poor or ugly, but were, without exception, noble maidens of legendary beauty who had forsaken their wealth and privilege to follow God. As far as I could gather from reading the stories, no lowborn woman such as Walburga could hope to become a saint, even if she was twice as pious as Jutta von Sponheim. I pondered whether beauty, too, was a necessary ingredient. Didn’t Cuno preach that one’s outer features mirrored the inner soul, that a plain face and awkward figure betokened a coarse nature? All the more reason for me, a child born without the least gift of prettiness, to skulk deeper into the shadows. You will never be a saint, never be anything the least bit special. In deepest humility, I would have to resign myself to be Jutta’s handmaiden, a servant to her greater glory. Jutta was the shining pinnacle, the alabaster statue upon the pedestal.