Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen
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The supposed apostate buried at Rupertsberg was a man of noble birth, but nothing else is known about his identity. As a result of her defiance in refusing to allow the prelates to disinter the man’s body and desecrate his Christian burial, Hildegard and her nuns suffered an interdict that was lifted only a few months before her death in September of 1179. The appearance of the cross of light blazing in the sky over Rupertsberg was Hildegard’s last vision, seen on her deathbed and witnessed by her nuns and Guibert of Gembloux, her secretary, provost, and biographer. In my novel, I moved this reported miracle forward to coincide with the fictional Sister Cordula’s death while the interdict was still in force.
All major characters and events in this novel are drawn from recorded fact. Sometimes, however, historical accounts reveal discrepancies.
Two diverging versions of Hildegard’s early religious life exist. According to Guibert of Gembloux’s Vita Sanctae Hildegardis, eight-year-old Hildegard was bricked into the anchorage with fourteen-year-old Jutta von Sponheim and possibly one other young girl. Guibert describes the anchorage in the bleakest terms, using words like “mausoleum” and “prison,” and writes how these girls died to the world so they could be buried with Christ. In Scivias, Hildegard’s first book, she strongly denounces the practice of offering child oblates to monastic life. Disibodenberg Abbey is now in ruins and it’s impossible to precisely pinpoint where the anchorage was, but the suggested location is two suffocatingly narrow rooms and a narrow courtyard built on to the back of the church. Only the foundations remain.
In 1991, the Vita Domnae Jutta Inclusae (Life of Mistress Jutta, the Anchorite) came to light. Probably penned by Volmar, this presents a completely different story, suggesting that Hildegard spent her childhood at Jutta’s family estate of Sponheim, only entering the monastery when she was fourteen and Jutta twenty. It’s difficult to say which account is more accurate.
According to Guibert, Jutta was a very beautiful and desirable young woman who spurned male attraction on no uncertain terms.
She put up an unflinching resistance to all the base-minded who told her unseemly stories and who stood in the way of her vow, crying out in imprecation to them: “Get away from me, you detestable purveyors of an oil which shall never anoint my head.” (Ps. 140:5)
Did some buried sexual trauma influence Jutta’s extreme choice to become not an ordinary nun but an enclosed anchorite and to embrace the fanatical asceticism that eventually brought about her premature death? Before entering the religious life, Jutta longed with all her heart to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but her brother Meginhard forbade her. So instead she renounced the world. Jutta’s Vita describes her extensive fasts and how she refused to allow food to pass her lips even when her abbot implored her to eat. The Benedictine Rule itself preaches the moderation that Hildegard herself espoused. Jutta’s Vita also provides the detail of Hildegard discovering the penitent’s chain wound three times around her dead magistra’s starved and wasted body.
Although fervently forthcoming regarding her affection for her lifelong friend Volmar and her deep love for Richardis von Stade, Hildegard is curiously reticent in describing her feelings for Jutta, the woman who was her mentor and spiritual mother. Only after Jutta’s death did Hildegard come into her own and begin to write about her visions, which would eventually make her one of the most famous women in Europe. The rest of her colorful life is history.
I’ve taken some liberties with the time line. It is believed that Richardis von Stade died in 1151, within one year of leaving Rupertsberg Abbey and a year before Rupertsberg’s consecration in 1152. It is certainly a possibility that Richardis illuminated Hildegard’s visions, though this cannot be proven. We do know that she worked closely with Hildegard during the ten years it took her to complete Scivias.
Some traditionalists will point out that Hildegard was deeply conservative in many respects and will argue that she has been unfairly appropriated by feminists and New Age spirituality. Others, such as Kathryn Kerby-Fulton in her essay “Prophet and Reformer: Smoke in the Vineyard,” maintain that although Hildegard’s sacramental theology was orthodox, her reformist thought was radical, as evidenced in her blazing sermon against ecclesiastical corruption that she delivered in Cologne in 1170. Pope Benedict XVI cited this same sermon in his 2010 address to the Roman Curia concerning recent sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. The Lutheran Church in Germany regards Hildegard not only as a reformer, but also as a prophet of the Reformation. Indeed, her theology and philosophy are so complex and multistranded that her work and life continue to inspire very diverse groups of people, from conservative Catholics to feminist theologians, such as Barbara Newman, whose book Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine profoundly influenced me during the writing of this book.
The quoted letters are my abridged and paraphrased versions of the authentic letters in Joseph L. Baird’s The Personal Correspondence of Hildegard of Bingen, and the lyrics of her quoted songs are my own paraphrased versions of those from the liner notes of the following CDs, which I listened to continually while writing this novel.
11,000 Virgins: Chants for the Feast of St. Ursula, Anonymous 4, Harmonia Mundi, USA.
The Dendermonde Codex, Dous Mal/Katelijne Van Laethem, Etcetera.
A Feather on the Breath of God, Gothic Voices, Hyperion.
Canticles of Ecstasy, Sequentia, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi.
Voice of the Blood, Sequentia, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi.
Hildegard’s observations on wildlife, herbal medicine, and gemstone healing are gleaned from Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica: The Complete English Translation of Her Classic Work on Health and Healing, translated from the Latin by Priscilla Throop and published by Healing Arts Press. In contemporary Germany, there are still naturopathic doctors who work with Hildegard’s medicine and dietary philosophy.
I wish to dedicate ecstatic canticles of praise to my editor, Adrienne Brodeur; my agent, Wendy Sherman; my copy editor, David Hough; and to the entire team at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I received much support from my husband, Jos Van Loo, who read this book in manuscript, and from my writers group: Cath Staincliffe, Pat Hadler, Trudy Hodge, and Kath Pilsbury. The Historical Novel Society and its wonderfully nurturing community of writers and readers is a continuing source of inspiration. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to Karleen Koen, Sharon Kay Penman, Margaret George, Stephanie Cowell, CW Gortner, and Margaret Frazer for their early endorsement and support. My mother, Adelene Sharratt, shared her notes on a course on women mystics taught by Gabriel Ross.
About the Author
MARY SHARRATT is an American writer who has lived in the Pendle region of Lancashire, England, for the past seven years. The author of the critically acclaimed novels Summit Avenue, The Real Minerva, and The Vanishing Point, Sharratt is also the coeditor of the subversive fiction anthology Bitch Lit, a celebration of female antiheroes, strong women who break all the rules.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Hours of the Divine Office
Prologue: Apostate
PART I
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
PART II
9
10
11
12
PART III
13
14
15
Epilogue
Rupertsberg, 1179
Afterword
About the Author
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