Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen

by Mary Sharratt

  My face burned as I clasped his scarred hands. “I’m fighting for Rupertsberg’s very existence. Would you not fight till your death if Bermersheim was under siege?”

  “I’d fight to my last, but with no joy. By the time I was your age, Hiltrud,” he said, turning to our niece, “I’d seen enough death and gore to last a lifetime. In truth, I envied you, Hildegard, safe within cloistered walls and innocent of slaughter.”

  “Brother, I’m so sorry to hear how you suffered.” My eyes traced the jagged scar running down his cheek. “I shall pray that you find peace.”

  “Pray for your own peace,” he said. “You do yourself no favor by waging war with your abbot.”

  His words pierced me where my armor was weakest.

  “I only want to feed my daughters,” I said, remembering Richardis’s thin face. “Our nephews are welcome to your castle and your gold, but I beg you to lend me your flocks and herds so we might at least avert starvation. And horses, if you could spare them. I think I will need to travel to Mainz and plead before the archbishop.”

  Futility and despair weighed on me, for I feared Hugo would see me as a grasping, greedy woman. As I fought back tears, he sat with me in silence for what seemed an age.

  “If I give you what you ask for, will you bury me in your churchyard?” he asked. “And keep my soul forever in your prayers?”

  Something in his voice was broken. When I looked into his eyes, I saw that he was closer to the next world than this one and that, despite his gibes, he genuinely feared for his salvation. The blood he had shed still tormented him, as though it were an indelible stain on his soul.

  “Yes, brother, of course. Even if you don’t grant us a single hen, you’re forever in my prayers.” While Hiltrud and Volmar looked on, I held the old man like a child, rocking him back and forth.

  To my unending gratitude, Hugo endowed Rupertsberg with his entire estate and its tithes, its tenants and crops, its flocks and fields, its forests and fish, its wool and flax. Thanks to him, Volmar, Hiltrud, and I rode home with full bellies and fresh horses. Behind us, servants herded the cattle and sheep and drove wagons laden with wheat and wine. After a two-day journey, we returned to Rupertsberg in triumph, reaching the gates at sunset. How the builders and stonecutters stared to see us bringing home the train of livestock. Though it was still Lent and we were forbidden meat, there would be milk and fresh cheese in plenty and enough wheat to provide bread until this year’s harvest rolled in.

  As we rode up the twilit hill, Richardis awaited us, bearing a lantern that illumined her wondering face. How I rejoiced to see her restored to health. Adelheid and Verena stood with her, gathered in her circle of light.

  “My daughters, I told you God would provide,” I said, elated but too stiff to leap down from my saddle until Richardis helped me, her arms around my waist. I had grown so thin that even she, so recently ill, could lift me in her arms.

  “You did exactly as you promised,” she murmured, her cheek soft against mine.

  Underlying the warmth of her welcome, I sensed a somberness, something she feared to tell me. She squeezed my hands and looked at Adelheid and Verena. The three of them glanced at one another, as though searching for words.

  Slowly it dawned on me.

  “Where’s Guda?” I asked. “Where are Sibillia and Margarethe?”

  “While you were gone, they left for Schönau Abbey,” Richardis told me. “I’m sorry, Hildegard. I begged them to wait until your return, but you did give them leave to go.”

  With the edge of her veil, she brushed away the tears that clouded my eyes. The sense of betrayal knocked me sideways. After everything I had done to secure our future, Guda had fled behind my back like a coward, taking the novices with her.

  “Perhaps it’s for the best,” said Adelheid. “They will no longer sow discord. We who remain are your true core.”

  My loss was like an unstaunched wound. I had thought that if I tried hard enough, if I brought home the right treasure, provided the right comforts, I could win back Guda’s love, that girl who had been like a daughter to me, that five-year-old child I had once cradled in my arms. She hadn’t even bothered to say goodbye.

  This was supposed to be my victory, yet I sobbed in Richardis’s arms like a broken thing. Volmar laid a consoling hand on my shoulder.

  “Hildegard, we have stayed,” Verena said, “because we believe in you.”

  “Onward,” Hiltrud whispered.

  Not many days afterward, when I was still reeling from Guda’s abandonment, a withered old man came to call. If it weren’t for the servants bearing his coat of arms, I would never have guessed his identity. Once he had been tall and straight, shining and beautiful with his lion’s mane of curls. Now he drooped and dragged as Richardis showed him into the tent where Volmar and I were writing yet another letter to the archbishop.

  “Hildegard,” she said. “Count Meginhard von Sponheim requests an audience with you.”

  Volmar bristled, his face washed an angry red, his eyes shrinking to hard points.

  “You dare show your face here?” he demanded, casting down his stylus to glare in undisguised hatred at the man who had destroyed Jutta, Volmar’s eternal beloved.

  My stomach seized up in both dread and fury to see Meginhard, the author of my misery, this hypocrite whose rape of his own sister had cast her—and me—into living death while he had gone on living his life of opulence, as though he were spotless. It took all my self-discipline not to spit in his face.

  “What do you seek here, Meginhard?” I asked. If Volmar’s rage was boiling hot, mine was as frosty as a winter wasteland.

  His face was so sallow that he reminded me of an old dried-out cheese. His youth and beauty now faded, the mortal sin that had been corroding inside him for more than four decades lay exposed, as shameful as excrement.

  Ignoring Volmar, who looked mad enough to floor him, Meginhard spoke directly to me. “Hildegard, I have committed grave misdeeds, may God forgive me. In holy Jutta’s name, I wish to do good.”

  From behind him, his servants stepped forward bearing a chest of gold so heavy that they staggered from its weight. Dumbfounded, I stared at Meginhard, who blinked hard, a tic in his eye.

  “Magistra, please accept my offering.”

  Volmar looked as though he wanted to hurl the man’s guilty bribe into the Rhine. But I confess my first thought was one of temptation. Even if we never saw our dowries again, this was a handsome endowment and one we needed. It was certainly true that Meginhard had a debt to pay. Would it be a sin to accept his money? Was his gold as tainted as his soul? The burden of these questions and Rupertsberg’s uncertain future hung on my shoulders like a leaden cloak. God had punished Meginhard by rendering his seed sterile. Meginhard had no heir. He had no one. His life was a loveless desert.

  “Little Hildegard,” he said, with a grimace that was probably meant to be a smile. “Let me do this one good thing. We grow old.”

  Not awaiting my answer, he hobbled away, abandoning his chest of gold.

  As summer waxed, so did the fortunes of Rupertsberg. Heinrich, Archbishop of Mainz, bequeathed to us a mill at the Binger Loch and also a toll tower on its island in the Rhine, both of which would generate a steady, lasting income. Prior Helengerus sent us a written charter in which he agreed to return part of our dowries and promised that Disibodenberg would not revoke Volmar against our will. This wasn’t to say that Cuno had given in to me, but rather that he had allowed his prior to arrange the sort of compromise that made him appear munificent.

  14

  THE SUMMER OF 1151 seemed to be the shining pinnacle of my existence when all my dreams came true. In September, I would turn fifty-three, and instead of bowing to the inevitable decline of advancing age, I seemed to flourish like the orchards encircling our monastery. Such good fortune abounded that I confess I succumbed to the sin of pride.

  Despite our every obstacle, my daughters and I had established a self-sufficient monastery
with its own mill, its herds and flocks, its stables and crops, its fishpond and vineyards. Our every workshop boasted running water, and our newly finished dormitory could accommodate fifty nuns. Before the first snows came, we would have latrines with working sewers and a bathhouse with a steam bath. Like guests drawn to the banquet table, daughters of the nobility entered our house, enriching us with their dowries. We gained more than a dozen new postulants.

  Our new home was no hermitage but a landmark, crowning the hill where the Nahe joined the Rhine. Ships from far and wide sailed past our ramparts. How could people fail to marvel at how Rupertsberg had sprung up in the space of a few years? A great monastery founded by women—not by an emperor, bishop, or prince—was unprecedented in the German lands, a miracle. Pilgrims flocked to us, many of them unschooled souls who could not read a word of my writings, but who had heard of my visions and the restorative powers of the medicine we practiced in our hospice. In defiance of Cuno, who said I was only a magistra and subject to him, nearly everyone addressed me as abbess, from my own daughters to the writers of the letters that flooded in as Rupertsberg’s reputation spread through the land.

  Blessing begat blessing. That summer I completed Scivias, the fruit of a decade’s work. We sent copies to my great patrons Pope Eugenius, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Heinrich, Archbishop of Mainz. Everything in my world seemed perfect and complete. We only needed to finish construction on our new church, and then, the following spring, the archbishop would come to consecrate Rupertsberg, our hard-won paradise.

  Upon a glorious August morning, I read through my correspondence. Since Volmar was busy with other matters, Richardis sat with me in his stead, taking dictation in her flowing hand. My soul seemed as expansive as the sun streaming through the open window. Thus, I could regard the unflattering letter with good humor.

  “Cara, listen,” I said, before reading aloud the pointed epistle from a certain Magistra Tengswich, superior of the sisters at Andernach, a Benedictine house about fifty miles north.

  We have heard about certain strange and irregular practices that you countenance. They say that on feast days your virgins stand in church with unbound hair when singing the psalms and that they clad themselves in white with silken veils so long that they sweep the floor. It is even rumored that they wear crowns of gold filigree, into which are inserted crosses with a figure of the Lamb in front, and that they adorn their fingers with golden rings. And this despite the express prohibition of Saint Paul, who writes in the First Book of Timothy: “Let women comport themselves with modesty, not with plaited hair, or gold, or pearls, and costly attire.”

  O worthy bride of Christ, such unheard-of practices far exceed the capacity of our weak understanding, and strike us with no little wonder. Although we feeble little women rejoice in your fame and success, we still wish you to inform us on some points relative to this matter.

  I had to laugh at the barbs rendered all the sharper by their ironic guise of humility.

  “A sharp-witted woman, this Tengswich,” I said. “A pity her intelligence isn’t put to better use than attacking us, her sister Benedictines. What shall we write back to her?”

  I expected Richardis to share my mirth, but my friend appeared preoccupied, her eyes rooted on her writing desk.

  “She is right,” she said quietly. “About Saint Paul’s admonition.”

  “That pertains to married women, not virgins. Why should consecrated women, in the shelter of their own cloister, hide away their beauty as though it were something shameful?”

  My mind raced ahead, seeking out the right words for my reply to Tengswich. “Cara, please write this for me.” I closed my eyes as the words flew from my tongue. “These words,” I dictated, “do not come from a human being but from the Living Light: O woman, what a splendid being you are! For you have set your fountain in the sun and have conquered the world.”

  Writing down my dictation, Richardis flushed, as though I had chosen those words specifically for her and, in a way, I had, for there she sat in the full stream of sunlight, which illuminated her beauty. Though she was twenty-seven, she didn’t look a day over nineteen. This was our gift, the secret jewel of sworn maidenhood, freed from the burden of constant pregnancies. When my mother was only a few years older than Richardis, she had lost nearly all her teeth to childbearing.

  Our mortal lives were so brief, I reflected. We did not live for ourselves alone. Every abbess sought a protégée. Even Jutta, in her own tortured way, had tried her best to pour her learning into me. My dream was that Richardis would take the abbess’s staff when I departed this world. My visions, my writings, my music, this abbey, my entire legacy, would become hers, she who was my soul’s companion. I smiled at her fondly only to see that her hands were trembling, spilling ink onto the parchment.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “Hildegard, I ask your leave to return to my homeland in Saxony. The sisters of Bassum Abbey have elected me as their superior.”

  “My dear, is this a jest? How could they elect you having never laid eyes on you?”

  “Such things are not unheard of,” she said. “I’ve served you for many years. Now I may serve others.”

  I realized she was dead earnest.

  “This is your mother’s doing,” I said. “Bassum is in your brother’s archdiocese, is it not? Your brother is archbishop and she would have you be an abbess. An exalted rank to match the exalted position of your family. Another gem in your mother’s crown.”

  “How dare you mock her?” My friend turned on me in genuine anger. “You would be nothing without her! This abbey would not exist. You would still be at Disibodenberg under Cuno’s heel.”

  “Why?” I asked her. “Why would you want to leave after everything we’ve endured together?” My heart raced through my memories of her muteness and then the miracle of her speech, of how she had raised me from the deepest abyss when I thought I would be damned for heresy. “Cara, I built this house for you.”

  My voice tore at this admission. Of course, I had built Rupertsberg for all my daughters and the glory of God. Yet at the still center, at the axis of the wheel around which everything revolved, was Richardis, my vision of Caritas made flesh. My Anima, my soul.

  Her eyes filled with tears, as mine did, but she folded her arms and turned her back to me, her stubbornness reminding me of how she had erected a wall of silence to thwart her mother. It stabbed my heart to see her throwing that same defiance at me.

  “Did you think I would always be the pale moon reflecting your sun?” she asked me.

  “This is your mother’s will, not your own!” To my horror, I found myself shouting at her. Softening my voice, I added, “Don’t let her meddling tear us apart.”

  She set her jaw. “How can you be so sure it isn’t my will?”

  “You can’t leave. I need you here.” I gulped for breath, still not believing any of this. “My dear girl, let’s speak no more of this. Write to your mother and tell her you refuse.”

  “I’m not a girl anymore. And my mother grows old. She would have me in Bassum, close to home. After all she has done for you, how can you deny her this?”

  “Your mother bought the office for you.” My voice grew cold and quiet. “This is simony, a sin against God. I forbid it.”

  She laughed, as though in shock. “Didn’t you once promise me that you would never hold an unwilling girl as your prisoner? Now you act like Cuno, the one you fled. Guda was right. Ambition has swollen your head and made you hateful.”

  “Guda?” Annoyance and bewilderment swirled around me in an unholy dance. “What does Guda have to do with any of this?”

  Richardis’s face went as red as blood.

  “She wrote to Mother. She said she worried that our friendship was impure.”

  At first I could not believe it. Then a white-hot rage gripped me. I could have smashed the precious window glass.

  “You know that’s a lie. I love you as Paul loved Timothy.”


  She wept, her face looking pale and exhausted. “Hildegard, you have been kind. You were a friend to me when my own mother despaired of me. But the time has come for you to let me go. I’ve helped you finish Scivias. There are other illuminators among the new postulants to replace me.”

  I kept shaking my head. “No, no, no. You can’t.”

  Hurt blazed in her eyes. “You think you can stand in my way? The archbishop will release me, even if you don’t.” Walking away from me, she had reached the door when she turned to me again. Her head was bowed, her voice leaden. “Adelheid is leaving, too. She has been elected abbess of Gandersheim.”

  The summer of our triumph bore the bitter fruit of loss. My heart turned upside down, a cup emptied of its life-sustaining fluid. For fifteen years I had shared my life with this young woman, my confidante through every victory and humiliation. Then, like a bolt of lightning striking down from a clear summer sky, came this. The girl who had come to me as a mute and then opened my heart was prepared to shake the dust from her sandals and walk away. The shock left me floored—I simply couldn’t grasp how my dearest friend could so abruptly announce her wish to leave.

  Had the warning signs been there all along, I asked myself, evidence of a cooling in her regard for me, which I had been too blind to see? Perhaps she resented my rule over her as superior, or perhaps she even had ambitions of her own that her mother was only too happy to help her fulfill. Maybe she had become weary of living in my shadow. Or had Richardis, at the age of twenty-seven, finally outgrown me? That thought made me sag and feel impossibly old.

  To think her mother would act so rashly behind my back. I tried to calm myself long enough to piece together the sober facts. At some point after leaving Rupertsberg, Guda had written a dire letter, full of lies and exaggerations, to the margravine, her aunt. The margravine, taking the message to heart, had then decided to withdraw from Rupertsberg her two remaining kinswomen—Richardis, her daughter, and Adelheid, her niece. The abbeys she had selected for them were the most elite in Saxony. But having never set foot in those houses, Richardis and Adelheid could not expect to be elected abbesses without strings being pulled and gold changing hands. I could not fathom a more blatant case of simony. Bassum was a Benedictine house of high esteem, established nearly three centuries ago. Gandersheim, Adelheid’s destination, was a convent for vowesses rather than nuns—secular noblewomen who made simple vows of chastity and who lived under an abbess’s spiritual guidance while still holding on to their wealth and possessions.