Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen

by Mary Sharratt

  10

  THREE YEARS PASSED, during which time Richardis, Verena, and Hiltrud made their final vows as ordained nuns. Two further novices, Sibillia and Margarethe, came to join us. Meanwhile, Scivias grew into a great stack of pages.

  The outermost room of our cramped nunnery with its large window had become our private scriptorium, the panes of horn now replaced with glass to allow the fullest flood of light. Outside the open door, the courtyard hummed with bees greedy for the nectar of those flowering herbs, their perfume holier to me than frankincense.

  Adelheid sat at her desk, copying a text of Aristotle, while I sat with Richardis and Volmar. In the next room, its door open to let in the light and air, Verena and Hiltrud embroidered while Guda taught the new novices to play the psaltery, using the melodies I had composed for them. Their music provided the counterpoint to our studies. With the young women to guide and nurture, Guda had finally found her happiness, doting on those girls as though they were her daughters.

  As I described my visions, Volmar made notations on his wax tablet while Richardis, now twenty-one, sketched on hers. To my joy, she didn’t appear to regret her vows, but seemed to rejoice in this life. That I would be blessed with so dear a companion! Though my youth had been harsh, these later years had brought me gladness and true friendship. Indeed, everything in my little world seemed right and good, everything flowing, as the purest waters flow from their source high in the Alps before joining the springs and brooks that feed the mighty Rhine. For every thing there is a season. And this was the late blossoming of my life when I unfolded like an autumn crocus.

  We were absorbed in our tasks when Guda raised her voice in alarm. Volmar, twisting on his stool to look into the other room, went a shade paler. Before my friend could utter a word of warning, Prior Egon swaggered into our sanctuary. Egon, not Cuno. Our abbot, it transpired, was too great a coward and so he let his prior be his messenger.

  Without preamble, Egon snatched my Scivias manuscript and clutched it to his chest with the malice of a glutton stealing our daily bread.

  “What are you doing?” My heart caught in my throat—those precious pieces of parchment were the revelations given to me by God.

  “The pope’s envoy has graced us with a visit. Eugenius has heard of your writings and so he has sent his delegation to question you.”

  As the shock descended upon us, the only noise was Richardis’s stylus falling to the stone floor.

  “To what purpose?” Volmar demanded, his mild face distorted in outrage.

  But I already knew. Three years ago Rorich had tried to warn me. Tall trees are the first to go down in the storm. My vision grew dark, as though the moon had eclipsed the sun.

  “To examine Hildegard for heresy.” Egon’s every word rang like a nail being driven into a coffin lid.

  How long, I wondered, had the prior been biding his time, waiting to fling those words into my face? And why now? Why had they allowed me to write for four years before making their move? How much deliberation and discussion had gone into this? The Archbishop of Mainz had to be behind it—it would have been his duty to alert Rome. Rorich had promised to defend me for as long as he was able, but he was only one man.

  “Prepare yourself, Hildegard. They will interrogate you in the chapter house tomorrow.”

  Smug as a gargoyle, Egon stalked away with the unfinished Scivias, the fruit of four years’ labor, in his greasy fingers.

  “It’s over,” I whispered as Richardis reached for my hand. My awakening, my flowering, my unfolding had been in vain. It was as if Egon had bricked me into the anchorage once more and the daylight would never again touch my face.

  I’d been a fool to think I could write and be left in peace! This was no private endeavor of mine, it couldn’t be. Everything written on theology was the Church’s business and must be dissected and discussed, for any whiff of unorthodoxy undermined the whole institution. The fate of heretics was something I understood only too well, both from my reading and from Cuno’s blistering sermons on the subject. How easily my brethren could excommunicate me, cast me out, leave me with nothing. The very clothes on my back belonged to Disibodenberg.

  Even that mighty philosopher, the castrated monk Pierre Abélard, once the glory of the cathedral school in Paris, had been declared guilty of heresy, not once, but twice, at the Council of Soissons and finally at the Council of Sens, only five years ago, when he had been condemned unheard and commanded to write no more. The Church had burned his books. Only a year later he died, the fight and fire gone out of him. If they could silence so great a scholar, surely they would make short work of a woman such as I.

  I turned to my sisters. “You shouldn’t have to suffer on my account. If they put me away, you shall vote in a new magistra. Your life shall go on.”

  “You are our magistra,” Adelheid said, looking to Guda, who wept quietly, her arms around the novices.

  “I will send for my mother,” Richardis said. “She would never allow you to be treated this way.”

  “Child,” I said, “even your mother cannot stand in the way of the pope.”

  The bells rang for Vespers, but instead of leaving to join his brethren for the Divine Office, Volmar remained with us, in the depths of what had once been our prison—and might soon be again if Egon got his way.

  “Hildegard, you must act, and quickly,” Volmar said. “Your very life depends on it.”

  “What can I do?” I closed my eyes.

  Volmar refused to let me give in to despair. “Who is the most powerful man in the Church?”

  “The pope, who has sent his inquisitors after me!”

  “Even the pope relies on the wisdom of his counselors. Who is Eugenius’s mentor? At whose feet did he learn?”

  “Bernard of Clairvaux,” I said. “The Cistercian.”

  Even I knew that Eugenius had been Bernard’s postulant and that his path to the papacy owed much to his friendship with that great man.

  “You must write to him.” Volmar found an empty sheet of parchment hidden at the bottom of the desk.

  “Tomorrow,” I said, fearing that my friend risked too much on my behalf. “If you don’t show yourself at Vespers, Cuno will punish you.”

  “I’ll take any penance,” Volmar said. “We must begin.”

  Even as my heart brimmed in gratitude, the futility weighed on me. “Bernard was the very man who denounced Abélard. Why would he help me?”

  Throughout Christendom, Bernard of Clairvaux was famed for his asceticism, which might have put even Jutta to shame. He had worked to establish the Cistercian order since he found our Benedictine Rule too lax, our abbots too enticed by luxury.

  “Abélard,” said Volmar, “was an arrogant man whose philosophies would explain away the great mysteries of faith. Yet even so, had he shown the proper humility, he might not have been condemned. You are but an unknown nun in an obscure abbey, Hildegard. I think the holy Bernard will look kindly upon your visions of the Divine Lady.”

  At last I understood Volmar’s reasoning. Bernard of Clairvaux preached that the Bride in the Song of Songs was none other than Mary, whom he proclaimed the great intercessor for human redemption. He, who had received true visions of the Mother of God, might indeed give his blessing to my writings on the Lady at the axis of the wheel of creation.

  “We must capture Bernard’s attention quickly.” Volmar was already scoring lines on the parchment. “He’s a busy man. Eugenius has commanded him to preach a second Crusade.”

  Darkness was falling. Guda directed the novices to light every candle and lamp so that we could work long past sunset. Searching my soul, I summoned the words that Volmar put to parchment. My friend’s verdict on Abélard rang like an admonition. To survive this, I must appeal to Bernard with deepest humility.

  O Bernard, venerable father, I am greatly disturbed by visions

  that have appeared to me through divine revelation. Wretched

  in my womanly condition, I have from earliest
childhood seen

  great marvels that my tongue has no power to express, but

  which God has taught me that I may believe. Gentle father, in

  your kindness respond to me, your unworthy handmaiden, who

  has never lived one hour free of fear.

  I seek consolation from you that you might reveal to me

  whether I should speak about such things openly or keep my

  silence. And so I beseech your aid, through the sublimity of the

  Father, who sent the Word with sweet fruitfulness into the womb

  of the Virgin, from which he soaked up flesh, just as honey is

  surrounded by honeycomb.

  Once there was a king sitting upon his throne. It pleased

  him to raise a small feather from the ground, and he commanded

  it to fly. And so the feather flew, not because of anything in itself

  but because the wind bore it along. Thus I am but a feather on the

  breath of God.

  I stood in the chapter house, the only woman in that ocean of men. Cuno positioned me directly upon the stone in the floor marking Jutta’s grave, as though this could invoke the intercession of my holy magistra, who would have never caused her brethren such bother.

  The papal prelates assembled in their ranks as if they were foot soldiers awaiting the command to charge. But the Archbishop of Mainz had not come, owing to his poor health, and thus my brother was not present to speak in my defense. That morning I felt not as if I were a feather on the breath of God, but a dead autumn leaf hurled along in the tempest.

  “How do you know your visions come from God?” one of my inquisitors asked me.

  The pages of Scivias rested in his lap. Watching his fingers sift through the pages, I shook.

  “How do you know you are not deceived by Satan?” he continued, his voice rising in impatience as I gaped at him, my clenched hands dripping sweat.

  When I finally brought myself to speak, my voice was choked and small. “The Living Light I have seen could only come from God.”

  My arguments were simple, like the stammerings of a child. What made my claims any different from those of the Cathari, who would also declare that their beliefs had been revealed to them by God? These men would denounce and disparage me forevermore. How could I have presumed to put pen to parchment, they must have wondered, poor creature that I was, formed from a rib, a sinful daughter of Eve?

  Another prelate spoke. “You must have known that you courted heresy with these unauthorized writings. Calling yourself a prophetess!”

  I cast my eyes down to the stone covering Jutta’s corpse. “My lords, I serve the Church with all my heart.”

  But as I said this, my soul banished those dour-faced clerics, replacing them with a vision of the majestic woman crowned in gold who cradled the rejoicing and unveiled virgins in her arms. Ecclesia, the true inner Church, forever uncorrupted.

  “Eugenius himself must examine your writings,” the prelate holding Scivias told me.

  My forehead throbbed. So it wasn’t to end here, this day? My trial could last for months, even years, until the pope and prelates reached their verdict.

  Scivias, which had arisen from the depths of my being, a gift of the Light, begun in secret with Volmar and Richardis as my only confidants, would now be dissected by the Holy Father himself. Had I guessed this in the beginning, I would never have dared write a word.

  Volmar had spoken the truth—only Bernard of Clairvaux could save me now.

  Many months I waited, my despair as deep as winter’s snow. In that purgatory, forbidden to write, I could only await news of my fate. Cuno and Egon went out of their way to ignore me, as though I were already condemned and banished.

  When Bernard of Clairvaux’s response to my letter finally arrived, he offered me the blandest of good wishes, for he had much weightier matters requiring his intervention than the plight of one irksome nun. The Second Crusade had begun and none other than his own queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, rode forth for the Holy Lands.

  I have made some effort to respond to your letter, Hildegard, beloved daughter of Christ, although the press of business forces me to respond more briefly than I would like.

  We rejoice in the grace of God that is in you, and we most urgently beseech you to respond to your gift with humility and devotion. But, on the other hand, when the learning and the anointing (which reveals such things to you) are within, what advice could we possibly give?

  Volmar and my sisters, upon reading the letter, tried their best to lift my spirits.

  “It’s a great blessing that such an esteemed man replied to your letter,” Adelheid told me. “He holds you in his prayers.”

  “His letter finds no wickedness in your visions,” Richardis pointed out. “Does he not say you are gifted with God’s grace?”

  My trusted friends were not the only ones to have read Bernard’s letter. Cuno, I discovered, had scrutinized every word before allowing it to pass into my possession. When I entered the church to sing Vespers, my abbot looked me in the eye for the first time in half a year, his tight-lipped smile betraying his confidence that Bernard was far too occupied to interfere on my behalf. Cuno had won. It was only a matter of waiting for the Synod of Trier, one year away, to hear the final outcome. Meanwhile, I might as well wall myself in again, so little had I to live for.

  Such darkness I was plunged into that even prayer seemed empty. My soul withered to a husk. It was as though God, who had once bathed me in Light, had abandoned me.

  That night, when I lay in bed with my face turned to the wall, I broke like an egg. Weeping seized me like a fit of falling sickness. This was my end. Cuno had silenced me forever. Such was my penance for aspiring to be anything more than a drudge, cringing before his will.

  As the silent sobs racked my body, footfalls as soft as fluttering moth wings crossed the floor. Freezing, not daring to breathe, I willed my sister to return to her bed. Instead a weight settled on the edge of my mattress. Hands pulled the blanket off my head before turning me around to face her whose fingers smoothed away my tears. By the light of the dormitory candle, kept burning all night long in accordance to the Rule, I saw Richardis.

  “Don’t you dare give up hope,” she whispered.

  Laying her soft body beside mine, her unbound hair spilling over my pillow, she embraced me, containing my grief like a vessel.

  “Do you think God gave you your visions in vain?” she asked, her lips against my ear. “Have you so little faith? What do you see?”

  I saw her, shining like a torch, her face only inches from mine. Her arms wrapped around me. Her lips were in my hair.

  “We mustn’t,” I whispered, pushing her away.

  As much as I longed to surrender to the solace she offered, I dreaded doing anything that might bring shame on her.

  “We aren’t doing anything wrong.” In perfect innocence, Richardis pressed her cheek to mine.

  “But the Rule—”

  “Does the Rule tell me to ignore my sister’s pain? If I was in despair, surely you would come to comfort me, just as I have come to you.”

  Her words rendered me mute. In the secular world, two sisters of flesh and blood, or even two fond friends, might hold each other without reproach. A voice inside told me this could be no sin, this tenderness, so freely offered. As she drew me into her arms once more, I forgot myself, went out of myself, leaving my cares in that glad night where all things ceased. She remained with me, murmuring her words of consolation until just before Matins when she slipped back to her own bed.

  O shining gem, o noble Lady who has no blemish, you are a companion of angels. How does God move in our lives if not through love?

  In my darkest hour, when I was certain my ruin was at hand, Richardis sustained me. She was the pillar of strength that allowed me to go on, her devotion the proof that I was not forsaken, that the Light still shone even through a night that seemed endless. If I was condemned, if my story was to en
d then and there, at least I had known this before I died. At least I had known what it was to be cherished.

  How different this was from that girlish infatuation I had once harbored for Volmar, my ardor overshadowed by the cold knowledge that he would adore only one woman—Jutta. My unspoken passion for him was destined never to be requited but to mellow into the chaste friendship that had endured until this day. But Richardis revealed what it was to love and have that love returned, measure for measure. Even though I was twice her age, she held up a mirror. In her gaze, I was beautiful.

  What Richardis and I shared was something ineffable, as though God had brought us together for a purpose. Together we grew into nobler souls than we would have been apart. She was so precious to me, this girl who had found her voice just as I began to write of my visions.

  I was not ignorant of Eros by any stretch. Three decades ago, when Volmar had whispered to me of his brothel visit, his shame had mingled with his wonder at the ecstasy he had discovered, the force that moves the stag to bugle in the rut. My women pilgrims had described for me the rush of warmth in their wombs and breasts, that vehement heat bursting into rapture. The greater their delight, the more beautiful the children they conceived. I had read many texts, including Constantine the African’s De Coitu, that outlined the many ways in which men and women coupled, and also how certain men and certain women desired their own sex—this was why the Benedictine Rule insisted that we sleep fully clothed in separate beds and in communal dormitories where a candle burned the entire night through. I knew all this, yet my love for Richardis seemed to emerge from a different place, a secret chamber only we could enter, as pure as Felicitas’s love for Perpetua when she followed her beloved mistress through the fiery gates of martyrdom.