Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen

by Mary Sharratt

  Tengswich of Andernach, among her other allegations, accused me of snobbery in soliciting novices of the aristocracy, whose dowries would secure Rupertsberg’s financial underpinnings that had hitherto been so precarious. I wondered what the good Mistress Tengswich would make of the ladies of Gandersheim.

  My thoughts whirled back to the black heart of my anguish. Why was Richardis leaving me? Surely it was not in blind service to her mother’s ambition. I remembered how her face had gone dark as she divulged Guda’s insinuations. Had Richardis been persuaded to believe that my love for her was something monstrous?

  There seemed little point in standing in Adelheid’s way if she was determined to leave, and so I granted her permission to sail on the next barge north. On our Rupertsberg landing, she knelt before me and kissed my hands until I raised her to her feet.

  “A good tree is known by its good fruit,” she said, tears glittering in her eyes as she spoke to me before the assembled nuns. “Mother, never will I forget the years you spent so gently educating me. May our friendship never be cast into oblivion. May God, who is love, make our love strong.”

  So sincere were her words that I gave her the kiss of peace and every benediction, even though I ached to lose Adelheid after thirty-eight years of friendship and sisterhood.

  How much harder it was to allow Richardis to vanish from my life without at least trying to make her see reason. My heart broke to remember how I pleaded with her.

  “You are a pure soul climbing your way to perfection,” I told her, endeavoring to speak as an abbess rather than a needy older woman who thought she would die if she lost her young friend. “How can you be happy in a faraway place, among strangers your mother has bribed, instead of here where everyone cherishes you?”

  As she paced back and forth, I saw how conflicted she was. Though she repeated her mother’s arguments, that it was time for her to return to Saxony and be abbess of Bassum, her voice was hollow and deadened. You love this place as much as I do, I wanted to cry out. You have blossomed here. Underneath that brittle shell, she was still Cara, my beloved friend, if only I could reach through to her.

  “Tell me,” I begged her, “is this truly what you want? You worked as hard as I to establish this abbey and now you want to abandon your home to dance to your mother’s bidding?”

  My words could not have been more ill chosen.

  “You would have me dance to your bidding instead? Don’t you see, Hildegard, you are so overpowering that sometimes I fear there will be nothing left of me.”

  I tried to swallow, but my throat hurt too much. “What did I do to make you despise me?”

  Her hands twisted together. “Why must you make this so hard?”

  But I had broken through her armor. She began to cry, her raw pain unmasked.

  Before I could go to her, Volmar entered the room as though this were a morning like any other with letters to be written and progress to be made on my new book of medicine, Causae et Curae. Richardis flew past him out the door. When I prepared to follow, Volmar stood in my path and laid his hand on my arm. My oldest friend stared at me with such disappointment. How much of our conversation he had overheard?

  “Hildegard, what are you doing?”

  I blinked at him as the tears ran down my face.

  “If you truly love her,” he said, “you’ll let her go with your blessing and prayers, as you did with Adelheid.”

  In his eyes, I saw the ghost of his love for Jutta, his unselfish devotion to her, how he had resigned himself to her rejection, even as it tore out his heart.

  But my will was an unswerving arrow.

  “They seek to sully our Richardis by this simony. It’s an utter disgrace. We must write to her mother and put a stop to this. The election in Bassum must be annulled.”

  He shook his head. “I will have no part of this.”

  Even my gentle Volmar despaired of what I did next.

  Scathing letters I wrote to the Margravine von Stade but to no avail. Then my own archbishop, who had been my ally, my shining Angel Gabriel, commanded me to release Richardis. Invoking the voice of God, I lashed out at the man, accusing him of being party to simony. In my last act of desperation, I wrote to Pope Eugenius himself and had barely sent off that missive when, one bleak October morning, a tumult outside our abbey sent me rushing down to our landing, where I saw the barge bearing the Margravine von Stade’s coat of arms. Worse still, the monks of Disibodenberg barreled their way toward our gates as though they intended to lay siege.

  Under that iron-cold sky, Richardis emerged, her traveling cloak flapping around her slender body. The tall figure of her mother took her arm. Though she was nearly sixty, the margravine was as formidable as ever, half a head taller than I. The look she gave me was so vindictive that I could only conclude that Guda’s poisoned words had succeeded in turning her against me.

  Yet even now a desperate hope beat inside me that this might be averted if only I could summon the right words. I seized Richardis’s hand.

  “Cara, don’t go.”

  Her eyes huge and tender, she clasped my fingers. What shattered me to pieces was the look she gave me, as though she longed to say so much, but before she could utter a word, her mother spoke for her.

  “Cease your hectoring, magistra. We must be on our way.”

  The words flew out of my throat before I could stop myself. “You bought the office of archbishop for your son, didn’t you? Now you will lay the stain of simony on your daughter!”

  The margravine set her mouth in a grim line. “You didn’t call it simony when my money went to build this abbey for you. I’ve given you what you wanted. Now let my daughter go.”

  Then I uttered the words that made the lady stare at me in pure hate.

  “I have authority over her and I forbid this.”

  Had I truly spoken so covetously, as though she, my soul’s light, were a mere possession?

  “The archbishops of Bremen and Mainz have authority over you, magistra, as do I.” A blade twisted in my flesh to see Cuno. “And I command you to release her.” Gray and stooped, my abbot had aged immeasurably since I last saw him and still he gloated to see me so undone.

  “Stop it,” Richardis hissed. “All of you! Listen to yourselves, bickering like children.”

  She drew back her shoulders and strode toward the barge and her future, leaving Cuno and her mother to scurry in her wake.

  My memory flashed with the vision of her cartwheeling down the riverbank, a free-spirited girl who would not let herself be bullied. That young woman was a force of nature, her roving spirit dancing between silence and outbursts of speech, her inner beauty bearing fruit in her illuminations that mirrored the sacred flame inside her. Cara, Caritas, Carissima.

  Before stepping onto the barge, she turned to give me one last wrenching look, her eyes piercing my soul, as though to tell me she would have indeed stayed had I not been so insufferable. Then the barge set sail, and she was gone.

  The dream of our life in Rupertsberg shattered, the soul of our community ripped to shreds. With their drawn faces, the sisters seemed so melancholy, both missing their friend and dreading my temper, for without Cara’s love ennobling my soul, I descended to my most ignoble depths, my selfishness laid bare. I was unlovable, detestable. Ambition has swollen your head and made you hateful.

  To Richardis,

  Beloved, listen to me, speaking to you in the spirit: my grief flies up to heaven. My soul is destroying the great confidence I once had in humanity.

  Why have you forsaken me? I so loved the nobility of your character, your wisdom, your chastity, your spirit, and indeed every aspect of your being, so that people have asked me, “What are you doing?”

  Now let all who have grief like mine mourn with me; all who have held such love in their hearts for a person—as I had for you—only to have that person snatched away, as you were from me.

  All the same, may the angels go before you. May the Son of Light protect you. May hi
s Mother watch over you. Be mindful of your desolate Hildegard.

  In vain I awaited her reply.

  Just past Candlemas, my brother Hugo died in our hospice. Unlike me, he seemed utterly at peace, reconciled with both this world and the next, my warrior brother who had once warned me that my ruthlessness ill suited a nun. I laid him to rest beneath the floor of our new church, his name carved on black marble for eternity.

  With its double towers and its tympanum bearing a carving of the Tree of Life, our new church of Saint Rupert and Saint Bertha was completed on the outside, the pink sandstone glowing in the weak winter sunlight. The stone masons and carpenters only needed to finish work on the inside so that it would be ready for our consecration in the spring. But on this Sabbath day all was quiet within, no picking chisels to be heard, only the wind outside moaning like a beaten hound. My eyes swept through the nave with its twelve pillars, its ceiling more than three cubits high, its arched windows mullioned with baluster shafts. Over each arch were the half-finished carvings of saints and angels. A round apse enclosed the chancel. Even with sawdust and masonry rubble littering the floor, the church was magnificent, this sanctuary I had built for my daughters. Why, then, did I feel so hollow, a shadow of the woman I used to be? It was as though I had gained the whole world only to lose the love illuminating my soul.

  Keeping my promise to Hugo, I knelt at his tomb and began to pray. A shudder ran down my spine to hear the north door of the church open—the corpse door, through which coffins would be borne to the graveyard after the Funeral Mass.

  A slim woman stood in the open doorway. Foggy gray light blurred the edges of her dark cloak as she raised her hands to her mouth to breathe on them, as though warming herself. Then she shut the door behind her, sending an echo through the shadowy nave. Slowly she made her way toward me.

  My heart in my mouth, I froze. Richardis stopped in her tracks and stared at me, her hands clasped over her heart, but she didn’t speak a word.

  “Abbess.” My eyes blurred as I made a reverence to her. “You honor us with a visit?”

  Just when I had resigned myself to her absence, that void I dragged around with me as if it were a great empty chest, there she was. The sight of her filled me with both impossible hope and the terror that I would lose her again, that she had never been mine at all. One hint of my old arrogance would make her vanish like smoke.

  “That title no longer belongs to me,” she said. “The sisters of Bassum cared little for me. They loved only my family’s fortune.”

  “I’m sorry.” My heart beat in pain. “I behaved so badly toward you. And I regret that your sisters in Bassum didn’t rejoice in their blessing to have you among them. Please say you’ll forgive me. I fear it was I who drove you from this place. Your home.”

  How regal she looked. Though she was thinner and paler, her eyes shone brighter than a thousand candles. She stepped forward to take my hands.

  “I’m sorry, too. Your letter made me remember everything I’d lost. I’ve come home to stay among those who love me for who I truly am.”

  For a long time we only looked at each other, both of us in tears, before shyly, tenderly reaching out to hold each other. As her arms wrapped around me, the church bells tolled. And then I awakened alone in my stone-cold bed to hear the bells ringing in the hour of Matins.

  How cruel it had been, the dream that seemed more than a dream. My desolation opened as wide as the maw of hell, forcing me to face the damning truth—Richardis had loved me, truly loved me, the way no other human being could, until my attempt to bind her to me at all costs had driven her away. I, not her mother, was the true cause of her banishment to that cold northern land.

  The following morning, Volmar handed me the letter that brought my torment to the surface.

  Hartwig, Archbishop of Bremen, brother of the Abbess Richardis, to Hildegard, Mistress of Rupertsberg.

  I write to inform you that our sister—my sister in body, but yours in spirit—has gone the way of all flesh, little esteeming the office I bestowed on her. When she made her last confession, she tearfully expressed her longing for your cloister. She then committed herself to her Lord through his Mother and Saint John.

  Thus I ask, as earnestly as I can, if I have any right to ask, that you love her as much as she loved you, and if she appeared to have any fault—which indeed was mine, not hers—at least have regard for the tears she shed for you, which many witnessed. And if death had not prevented her, she would have come to you as soon as she was able to get permission. May God, who repays good deeds, reward you fully in this world and in the next for all the good things you did for her, you alone, more even than family and friends; may he repay your benevolence which she rejoiced in before God and me.

  She died, my beauty, my love. Died longing for me just as I longed for her. Even her brother admitted how she regretted leaving Rupertsberg. If only I had been kinder, she might never have left at all. My heart stopped. I thought the loss of her would swallow me whole.

  Volmar took the letter from me and held my hand. Weeping, I looked at my oldest friend who was also my confessor.

  “I wish to be shriven of my sins.” My despair sent me plunging down a bottomless abyss.

  His grip on my hand was tight and warm. “You once told me yourself, a long time ago, that there are worse sins than love.”

  He who does not love, does not know God, for God is love. Deus Caritas est. In the shock of my bereavement, the wisdom dawned, slicing through my every delusion. I hadn’t sinned because I loved her, but because I had been so grasping and selfish—and this was the undoing of Caritas, true divine love. My love for her was never monstrous, but my attempts to dominate and control her, make her wholly my creature, had turned me into something abominable.

  Cara had loved the humble and questing nun I’d once been, when I had only wanted to write of my visions. To know the ways of grace and walk them as best I could. Not the domineering abbess I had become, ruled by the iron fist of my ambition. But if my vanity had overtaken me, Richardis had remained pure, unswayed by the false glamour of worldly glory. God favored her greatly. In her loveliness, she bloomed like a pure white rose in the symphony of her short life. Although I cherished her for her beauty and wisdom, God loved her more. She had been wooed by two very different loves until her Bridegroom, the worthier of the two, had taken home his true bride. O how tenderly you burn in the King’s embraces. How the sun shines through you. Your noble flower shall never wilt. She would never age. Her beauty would never fade. She was like a star sapphire, shining and eternal.

  His hand enclosing mine, Volmar listened to my outpouring of grief and misgiving.

  “My sin is my pride,” I told him. “And my cursed ambition. How I wish I could be purged of it.”

  What if Cuno had been right? Perhaps I had been living a lie, not serving God’s will, but only my own. Had I been meek enough to remain at Disibodenberg, Richardis and Adelheid would never have left. And Guda—she would have still loved me. Their abandonment was my punishment for pushing myself forward.

  “Would you really wish to be purged of your true character?” Volmar’s eyes filled with a compassion as wide as the sea. “God made you who you are for a reason. Without your boldness and strength of will, you’d still be in the anchorage. Locked within two rooms.”

  I gazed at him through my tears.

  “You led us to this house,” he said. “Now fulfill your true purpose.”

  “And what is that?” I asked, for I felt as though I had completely lost my way.

  “Fulfill the desire of your dear sister’s soul,” he told me. “Do good works, as she would have wished.”

  Cara’s angel voice whispered in my ear. A true love sees things through to their end.

  That night I dreamt I was a child, lost in a deep forest, far from home. When I cried out in fear, Cara appeared. She was the wise woman and I the bewildered girl. From the moist spring loam, she plucked a pale gold flower and offered it to me
in her outstretched palm.

  The primrose takes its power from the sun and so it heals melancholy. Gently she pressed the flower to my pounding heart. Now open your soul to the Light!

  She rose before me, as tall as a tower, blinding me with her radiance. Her gown was red and she was crowned in gold, a virgin in a vast heavenly chorus singing a canticle of unutterable beauty. It was as though she cast my entire being in an alchemical vessel, firing it to such intense heat that I emerged in a brand-new form, my soul opening like a flower. I awakened with her celestial symphony still ringing in my ears.

  Staggering from my bed, I opened my window and gulped the cold, clear air that stung my face and dried my tears. The vault of heaven blazed with stars. The moon cast silver on snow-mantled trees. Below our ramparts, the Rhine flowed, free of ice, while in the forest, a fox barked and owls sang. Even on this February night, life burgeoned. Creation triumphed, brilliant with the divine spark, while the music Cara had given me thrummed inside my soul. Music, the first language of God.