2
WORLD AND CLOISTER
For in the eleven-hundredth year after the Incarnation of Christ, the teachings of the apostles and the burning righteousness which He had placed in Christians and the religious began to grow sluggish and turn to vacillation. In such times was I born and my parents pledged me to God with sighs…. In my eighth year I was offered to God for the spiritual life. (Vita, Bk 2)
I
In these words Hildegard, in her old age, described the circumstances of her birth and entry into religion. What the description lacks in circumstantial detail is made up for by her evocation of the mood of the times, which she portrays as one of decline and decay. This characterization of the turn of the twelfth century may, however, strike the modern reader as being at odds with our view of the period as one of ‘renaissance’ or ‘renewal’ in secular as well as spiritual terms.1
We know, for example, that in the course of the eleventh century western Europe began to recover from a period of stagnation and contraction which had followed on the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire. Internal instability was exacerbated by a series of external attacks—from Saracens in the south, Magyars in the east and especially from Vikings in the north and west. The gradual cessation of such external threats brought a measure of security and the population then began to increase. Agricultural productivity grew at an even greater rate. Thus people were in a position to look beyond their narrowed horizons, both metaphorically and physically. This sense of renewed vigour and of increasing possibilities for action found expression in various ways: in the First Crusade, which triumphantly reached Jerusalem in 1099, in an increase of land under cultivation, in the growth of urban centres, the expansion of cathedral schools, and the founding of new religious orders, such as the Cistercians, Carthusians, and Premonstratensians.
The kingdom of Germany was comprised of five great duchies: Franconia, Swabia, Saxony (incorporating Thuringia), Bavaria, and Lotharingia. Probably because it suffered less disruption from the barbarian invasions than other parts of Europe, Germany was one of the first areas to recover from the resultant political chaos. Yet the apparent stability which allowed a series of Saxon and Salian kings to dominate the scene for over a century was built upon very infirm and shifting foundations.
Part of the problem lay in the composition of the kingdom itself. Because of the lack of centralized government, over the years a great deal of power had devolved upon the men on the spot and the authority of these dukes, margraves, and counts was usually in inverse proportion to the frequency of the king’s visits to their territory. The position of the bishops, invested with temporal rights by the king from Carolingian times, had become more important with increased urban development and led to a greater potential for a conflict of interests with the nobility (not to mention the rising townsmen). A succession of eleventh-century kings allied themselves now with one faction and now with the other. The situation was further complicated by the lack of any clear-cut social boundary between the two conflicting groups, as the bishops were themselves generally drawn from the ranks of the nobility.
A new development which seems to have arisen because of the relative weakness of feudal ties (compared, for instance, with England or France), was the use of the so-called ‘ministeriales’ for the performance of royal business. This unique and anomalous class of servile or unfree nobility became increasingly influential and powerful in the course of the eleventh century, yet they were barred from marriage into the free nobility and excluded from positions reserved for this class, for instance, membership of certain cathedral chapters. Ministeriales were used increasingly during this period for garrisoning royal castles, and this was a particular source of resentment to the free nobility.
The rule of the Saxon and Salian kings, like that of the Carolingians, who saw themselves as representatives of God on earth and protectors of the church, was essentially theocratic. However, their reform of the papacy, by freeing it, at least temporarily, from the secular influence of warring Roman families, had the unintended consequence of putting in place a series of popes whose ideas on the reform of the church and its relation to the secular ruler inevitably brought the two spheres of influence into collision, culminating in the excommunication and deposition of Henry IV by Pope Gregory VII in 1075. During the reign of Henry IV (1056–1106) this contest combined with the social tensions sketched above to produce decades of civil war in Germany.
By 1090 the opposition to Henry at home, at first led ineptly by Herman of Salm and then with more effect by Eckbert of Meissen, showed signs of weakening. However, the successors of Pope Gregory had on the whole continued his reforming work and Urban (elected in 1088) renewed Henry’s excommunication and the ban on lay investiture together with other planks of Gregorian reform.2 It was he who proclaimed the First Crusade in Clermont which mobilized the forces of western Europe, with the exception of those of Germany, which was otherwise occupied, to undertake the defence of the Holy Places.
Such was the uneasy state of affairs in the kingdom of Germany when Hildegard was born. The closing stages of the drama, in which Henry IV’s son, Henry V, finally revolted and after imprisoning his father in the castle of Bockelheim, began to rule in his stead, had yet to be played out. After his father’s death in 1106 there was to be a lull in the civil strife as the younger Henry rallied the nobles to his cause and tried, in 1111, to settle the matter of investitures by marching to Rome with a large army. However, the pope later revoked the right of investiture granted to Henry under duress, and once more Germany experienced a period of civil war, a compromise solution only being reached with the Concordat of Worms in 1122.
The effect of such prolonged military and political disturbances on those not directly involved in the fighting is hard to assess. It should be remembered, however, that medieval warfare was usually quite localized. Much of the fighting during the civil war took place in Saxony, well away from the Rhineland, although some important towns, such as Cologne, were besieged on occasion. Away from such centres, the periodic rhythms of rural life doubtless continued largely undisturbed, together with the recurrent cycles of prayer offered up in the monasteries which dotted the landscape. Indeed, it is during these troubled years that monastic life in Germany underwent something of a renewal. This was largely due to the efforts of William of Hirsau († 1091) who introduced the observances of the French Benedictine monastery of Cluny to Germany. A contemporary wrote of his work:
By the effort of this holy man, the monastic religion, which among those who had assumed the religious habit had almost grown cold in the Teutonic regions, began to grow warm again and to recover.3
How are we to reconcile this decidedly optimistic view of the spiritual climate of the times with that expressed by Hildegard in the autobiographical excerpt quoted at the head of the chapter? Perhaps she was thinking of the large-scale politico-religious troubles, the conflict between the pope and emperor which caused such grave and widespread disturbances. There is, however, another possible explanation. In the passage quoted, Hildegard was considering history and her place in it from a different vantage point from either that of the biographer of William of Hirsau or even a modern historian. She was, in fact, locating the time of her birth in the broad sweep of salvation history, stretching from the creation of the world to its eventual consummation. Seen in the light of Christian historiography, the present, indeed all the time that had elapsed since the Incarnation, was being lived in the shadow of the world’s approaching end. It was not so much that the end of the world was felt to be particularly imminent—there were different views on this difficult question and Hildegard was careful in her writings never to commit herself to a date. Nevertheless the world and all that pertained to it was thought to be in decline, having reached its last age. In this period of the world’s senescence Hildegard saw a special role allotted to herself.
Since her interests were eschatological rather than historical, we should not expect to find Hildegard writing about particular contemporary events. There is, however, a convenient source of local information which can help us set the scene for the time of Hildegard’s birth. Disibodenberg, the monastery to which Hildegard went as an anchoress, produced a chronicle, written some time in the 1140s, which covers these years.4 What then, does the Disibodenberg monk record from this period?
The entries for the last decades of the eleventh century are much concerned with the conflict between Henry IV and his opponents. Rather than follow the annalist’s account of the frequent alternations of charge and counter-charge in the propaganda and actual war between Henry and his lay and ecclesiastical enemies, I shall quote his epilogue to the reign of Henry IV, inserted in the Annals under the year 1106:
It is perfectly clear that Henry was a perverse man and excluded from the Church by a just judgment. For he sold all spiritualities, was disobedient to the apostolic see in advancing a usurper to it by substituting Wigbert for Gregory, in departing from his legitimate wife…and in holding at little the words of the Pope.
The result of this clash of authority between the pope and the emperor was civil war: ‘since one took vengeance on another, brother spoke against brother, one supported the king and another the pope, so it happened many perished.’ On the other hand, Henry is not depicted as entirely without merit, for the chronicler goes on to claim that he was a most merciful and forgiving man and a good friend to the poor.
The writer of the Annals devotes much space (in his entry for 1095) to matters connected with the First Crusade, generally thought to be one of the more positive manifestations of contemporary spiritual vigour. Once again, however, the issue is not as clear-cut as it might at first look. The start seems promising enough, when, in response to the message of Peter the Hermit (for some reason the pope’s preaching the crusade at Clermont is not mentioned)
kingdoms were left empty by their rulers, cities by their bishops, towns by their inhabitants and not only men and boys, but many women took part in the journey, for a marvellous spirit in those times impelled men to gather for the crusade.
This ‘marvellous spirit’ was somewhat marred by subsequent developments. The first of these was the massacres of the Jews, perpetrated by the crusaders in a number of Rhineland cities. What was first conceived of as an action of Christian zeal—forcible conversion or death—soon degenerated into all-out expropriation and murder, that is, of those who did not prefer to commit suicide. As the chronicler remarks with little hint of condemnation:
some of them, although unwilling, took refuge in baptism lest they should lose both their lives and fortunes. However many were killed and their fortunes carried off by the Christians.
A laconic coda to this is found under the year 1097 where it is recorded that King Henry, returning from Italy, ‘allowed the Jews baptised by force the previous year their law and Jewish rites’.
As well as this overzealous approach to the enemies of Christ within their midst, other aspects of the conduct of the crusaders left something to be desired. The chronicler remarks that a great number of the crusading army was killed near Mersberg in Pannonia; ‘And deservedly, since men were travelling with women…and evil deeds of fornication and abomination were done between them.’ Of such other testimonies to spiritual ferment as the founding of the new monastic orders, the chronicler has very little to say. Whether this is due to professional jealousy, or a lack of interest and information, is hard to determine. We read only under the year 1099, ‘In these times an order of monks arose who wore not black, but grey clothes’, together with the dubious information that their founder was said to have been Adam. The entry for 1098, the year of Hildegard’s birth, reads simply:
Ruthard Archbishop of Mainz would not support the excommunicated king [Henry IV]. He lost his grace and went into Thuringia and stayed there many years.
Even from this short selection of entries it can be seen that, as far as the Disibodenberg chronicler was concerned, contemporary events illustrated sudden reverses of fortune, shifting allegiances, and a world where the balance of good and evil was constantly fluctuating. In fact, he only seems to recognize unequivocal progress when his gaze is withdrawn from the wider world and concentrated on the establishment and growth of the monastery of Disibodenberg itself, culminating in the dedication of the chapel of St Mary by Henry of Mainz in 1146.
He does not mention the first abortive refoundation of the monastery by Archbishop Ruthard of Mainz, although he does record the probable reason for its failure in his note for the year 1098. The Archbishop returned from exile and was restored to his see in 1105 in time to witness the showdown between Henry IV and his son that Christmas. During this time he probably resumed his original project of establishing monks at Disibodenberg and restoring the site. Although the Annals state that the dedication stone for the new monastic church was laid in 1108, when an abbot from the archbishop’s own foundation of St James at Mainz was installed, this does not rule out the possibility that monks were already there as early as 1105, a circumstance which becomes important when we turn to Hildegard’s association with the place.5
What overall impression of the times do we receive from the account of the Disibodenberg annalist? He describes a world in which physical conditions were harsh and social life was characterized by stark alternations of fortune. We find religious enthusiasm, and oppression in the name of religion, family and political allegiances which could as easily be repudiated as made, the enjoyment of high office dependent on the personal whim of the powerful, and the condition of the majority of people only to be inferred from their virtual omission from the story at all. But what of Hildegard?
II
On the subject of her family circumstances Hildegard is virtually silent. Godfrey, her first biographer, has little to add, although he does describe her as ‘famed equally for the nobility of her birth and her sanctity’. He names her parents as Hildebert and Mechthilde and calls them ‘wealthy and engaged in worldly affairs’. Comparison with the opening passages of other saints’ lives indicates that this is an entirely conventional description of the subject’s background.
Of course, such accounts may often reflect historical reality. The recruiting policies of most monasteries favoured the children of the well-born and, then as now, such a background was no disadvantage for worldly success. Recognition that it might not conduce to progression beyond this world was usually covered by a rider about the subject’s equal or greater sanctity. Thus St Hugh of Lincoln († 1200), the third son of a knight, was described by his medieval biographer as ‘a man of distinguished birth, but even more distinguished by reason of his sanctity’. Of course, the exact position and circumstances of the saint’s family are hard to extract from such conventional descriptions. There was, on the part of biographers, an understandable tendency to exaggerate the worldly position of their subjects, considering the general regard in which noble status was held. Thus Eadmer describes the parents of St Anselm († 1109) as ‘both of them of noble birth, so far as worldly dignity goes, and living spaciously in the city of Aosta’. This is rather too rosy a description, given that their condition was really one of ‘decayed nobility’, as Richard Southern has concluded from the little other evidence available.6
But what did it mean to say that Hildegard belonged to the nobility? In trying to locate Hildegard’s social position it should be remembered that German society differed from the more highly feudalized societies of England and France at that time. The retention by free men of large amounts of allodial land (land held on one’s own account and not from others) and the rise of the ministerial class (originally non-free men who rose to positions of power through personal service) complicate the picture. Hildegard’s family, it seems, belonged to the free nobility as opposed to the unfree ministeriales. On the other hand, there is no evidence to suggest that her father enjoyed the status of the highest group of nobles, the primores, men who held titles and possessed the offices of duke, margrave, or count although, as we shall see, Hildegard was no stranger to such circles.
By an examination of charters and records of the donations of Hildegard’s family to the convent of Rupertsberg, Marianna Schrader concluded that the family seat was at Bermersheim.7 Presumably, then, the family lived (whether spaciously or not is hard to say, given the notorious variation of medieval land measures and descriptions) on these lands. No traces of the family dwelling have been found, although it has been suggested that they must have owned the surviving church at Bermersheim, and that their house would have been somewhere nearby. Clearly, however, since partible inheritance was customary, the next generation might have expected to live a more straitened existence, if indeed it is true that Hildebert and Mechthilde were the parents of ten children.
It is possible that the thought of providing for this tenth child caused Hildegard’s parents to dedicate her ‘with sighs’ to religion as soon as she was born. Guibert of Gembloux’s claim that she was dedicated ‘as a tithe’ (literally ‘a tenth’) is another possibility, although the dedication of children as tithes may be more a figure of speech than an actual practice. In other words, a child could be regarded as a tithe to the church even if it was not strictly tenth in a family. Moreover, some of Hildegard’s older brothers and sisters may have already entered religious establishments by the time Hildegard was born and thus the ‘tithe’ would have been paid. Possibly some reference to Hildegard as a tithe was interpreted literally by Guibert to make her the tenth child in the family, a piece of information not recorded by anyone else. On the other hand, Hildegard certainly did come from a large family, as the names of seven of her brothers and sisters are known.8
The dedication of a child to religion at birth did not mean that he or she was irrevocably committed. It was in the nature of a private vow of intention on the part of the parents, rather than a public ceremony like oblation which indicated an actual change in status. Guibert of Nogent, though dedicated to the religious life as an infant after his mother survived his difficult and premature birth, feared his father would make him follow the profession of arms. He was only relieved of this fear when his father died while he was still too young to start his military training. St Bernard of Clairvaux made the distinction between such a parental vow and formal oblation quite clear in several of his letters.9 In Hildegard’s case both spiritual and material considerations probably confirmed her parents’ intention.
Almost nothing is known of Hildegard’s infancy and early childhood before her entry into the anchorage at Disibodenberg. That she was breastfed by her mother for at least some time may be inferred from a stray remark she made many years later: ‘from the time of my mother’s milk’ (that is, if it is not a conventional phrase used to refer to early infancy). Other evidence indicates that the use of wetnurses by the nobility was not universal at this stage. Several saints’ lives, including that of St Bernard, suggest that noble and pious ladies made a point of nursing their own children, in the belief that the child imbibed the mother’s good qualities along with the milk.
The image of the nurturing mother seems to come readily to Hildegard. We have, for example, a passage from the Vita, Bk 2 where she likens the granting of God’s grace to her after the initial difficulties of the foundation of Rupertsberg, to those happy occasions when ‘the sun breaks through as the clouds lift and when a mother gives her crying baby milk and he rejoices after weeping’. As a young child Hildegard would no doubt have spent most of her time in the company of servants, together with any of her brothers and sisters who were young enough to be under the care of a nurse. Indeed, the only surviving tale of Hildegard’s childhood describes a prescient conversation she had about an unborn calf with her nurse, which serves to indicate the agricultural nature of her surroundings as well as her rank. The nurse, amazed at her description of the calf as ‘white and marked with different coloured spots on its forehead, feet and back’, told Hildegard’s mother, and was rewarded in due course with the calf.10
It seems that Hildegard was not given any formal educational instruction while she was still at home. This is not surprising, since she would probably have been considered too young; formal teaching does not appear to have been started for either sex much before the age of about seven. Her informal education can only be guessed at. It must have included a certain amount of oral literature in the form of stories and songs, some basic religious instruction, and attendance at various celebrations and festivals.
One aspect of Hildegard’s early life which does emerge from her reminiscences is that she seems usually to have been surrounded by other people. This accords well with what we know of the communal nature of medieval society and its general lack of privacy. Hildegard, in recalling these days, refers several times indirectly to the presence of others in such words as ‘those who were about me’ or ‘those standing around’. The contrast between this crowded and busy household and the quiet and seclusion of the cell at Disibodenberg must have been very striking.
When writing about her early years Hildegard not unnaturally concentrates on the development of her spiritual being, rather than her material circumstances, although, as we shall see, her bodily states of sickness and health were ultimately connected with her visionary powers, a fact that Hildegard recognized herself. Hildegard places the first intimations of her extraordinary spiritual gifts at about the age of three when she ‘saw such a great light that my soul quaked’.11 However, at that age she was unable to communicate the nature of her experience to others. As her power to describe such experiences increased, so did her realization that she was in some way set apart from her fellows. The experience of the world that would allow her to distinguish what was normal from what was not may have been slow in coming to Hildegard because she was frequently ill. As she says, ‘I was ignorant of many outside things because of the frequent illnesses I suffered…which wasted my body and depleted my strength’ (Vita, Bk 2).
As time went on, she tried to conceal from others the nature and extent of her gifts. In her early years, however, she had not yet developed this facility, and she writes, ‘when I was filled with this vision I said many things which were strange to the hearers’ (ibid.). No doubt her frequent illnesses, as much as the evidence of spiritual gifts, strengthened Hildegard’s parents in their resolve to deliver her over for the spiritual life as they had promised at her birth—both characteristics being more acceptable in a nun than in a wife. The question, then, was what form the fulfilment of their vow would take and when it might be implemented.
Although the practice of oblation, the rearing of children destined for a religious life in the cloister, was apparently losing popularity in the early years of the twelfth century, it was still sufficiently common to be an option open to Hildegard’s parents, and seven was the usual age for such a step. The child oblate often entered an establishment close to home, so that some contact could be maintained with the family. The experience of Orderic Vitalis, who was sent, in 1085, from England to a monastery in France and never saw his parents again, was probably exceptional. There was no shortage of nunneries to choose from in the general vicinity of Bermersheim—there were at least two in Mainz, for instance, but it was not to these that Hildegard’s parents applied.
The reasons may have been quite fortuitous. About the time that the question of Hildegard’s placement would have arisen, the monastery of Disibodenberg was once more being refounded. The hill overlooking the junction of the rivers Nahe and Glan had long been the centre of a Christian cult, supposedly since the time of St Disibod, a wandering Irish bishop who settled there in the seventh century. A series of religious establishments had been located on or around the hill, sometimes housing monks and sometimes canons. Most seem to have had close connections with successive archbishops of Mainz. Around the time of Hildegard’s birth, Archbishop Ruthard, in a spirit of reform, had decided to improve the monastery by expelling the incumbent canons (originally placed there by an earlier archbishop), in order to establish a stricter and more regular observance. As mentioned earlier, this plan was delayed when he was forced into exile in Thuringia by Henry IV in 1098. On his return in 1105 he was able to resume the project, and although the dating of the different stages of development is problematic it is clear that by 1108 arrangements at the hill were sufficiently advanced to warrant both an abbot and the laying of a new foundation stone for the church. It is probable that there were already some monks in residence several years earlier.
At about the same time a further development occurred at Disibodenberg. Jutta, the daughter of Count Stephan of Sponheim, rejecting all offers of marriage, had decided to dedicate herself to God. She chose the life of a recluse or anchoress, rather than that of a nun in a regular convent of women. In accordance with her wishes her father or possibly her brother, Meginhard, built her a cell at Disibodenberg. The location of Jutta’s cell cannot now be established with any certainty. It would be usual to have it built adjacent to the church so that the recluse could observe the daily office. This is how Guibert of Gembloux describes the anchorage, when he says that Jutta was able to listen to the monks singing the Opus Dei. However, it is not clear whether Guibert is relying on what he was told about specific arrangements at Disibodenberg or on his general knowledge of the layout of other anchorages.12
Since there are no detailed descriptions of Hildegard’s first home at Disibodenberg, except for Guibert of Gembloux’s mention of ‘a small window through which they spoke to visitors at certain hours and through which the necessities of life were passed’, some idea of what it might have been like can be gained from contemporary descriptions of other such houses for small groups of religious women. We may take as one example the establishment which St Gilbert of Sempringham organized some time in the 1130s, for the seven maidens who formed the first members of what became the only original English monastic order.
According to Gilbert’s biographer the first house of his order was built ‘by the wall of the Church of St Andrew on the norm side’.13 It was surrounded by a stout wall which had in it only one door and one window. At certain times of the day the window was opened to admit the passage of food for the nuns and to pass out refuse. The door was kept locked, with Gilbert, jealous guardian of the key and the nuns’ chastity, being the only person who had access to them for the purposes of spiritual consolation, the teaching of religion, and the visiting of the sick. The addition of lay sisters and canons to the flock was made in a rather ad hoc manner, as Gilbert tried to work out the best way of meeting the needs of his nuns. As the numbers of both nuns and canons of the order grew, Gilbert drew up a more elaborate set of rules for the running of his establishments. The lengths to which he went in order to isolate the sisters from outside contact are vividly described: walls, ditches, barred windows, the fenestra versitilis (a revolving hatch so that the nuns did not see those who passed through the provisions), even the prohibition of singing for the nuns suggest a most zealous solicitude for the purity of the women under his care.
Guibert of Gembloux’s description of the anchorage agrees in most details with Gilbert’s and other accounts of this sort of building. He mentions the window, for instance, and as for the door, he suggests that Jutta and her companions were literally enclosed, with ‘wood solidly wedged in by stone and all approaches blocked up’. On the other hand, there was a good deal of latitude allowed in such arrangements. Aelred, for instance, in his Rule for anchoresses, allows for a door which is to be tended by an old woman of exceptional probity.14 Although the cell Christina of Markyate, a twelfth-century English anchoress, occupied for four years had a door, she was unable to open it by herself. She suffered a good deal as a result of being unable to leave her cell to satisfy the demands of nature until the hermit Roger paid his daily visit to her, especially since he ‘usually did not come till late’.15 Even if literal enclosure was the rule at Disibodenberg to start with, as the establishment grew there must have been some entrance for new members. Towards the end of Hildegard’s stay there the abbot, at least, was able to enter, since we have an account of him visiting Hildegard on her sickbed.
When Count Stephan’s plans for his daughter became known to Hildegard’s family (the closeness of the relationship between the two cannot be discovered; Hildebert, however, is shown witnessing a charter with Stephan’s son, Count Meginhard of Sponheim in 1127), the possibility of placing Hildegard with Jutta must have been canvassed. There were several apparent advantages, among them the proximity to home, a suitably aristocratic association, and perhaps the hope that a child of Hildegard’s age and physical frailty might be better off in such surroundings than as one oblate among many in a larger, more impersonal community. On the other hand, it is difficult for parents today to understand the mentality of those who were willing not only to enlist their children as conscripts in the army of God (to paraphrase David Knowles), but to do so in such a strict and irrevocable form. There is no suggestion here that Hildegard was merely being educated by Jutta and that she might later choose a different course in life. She was enclosed on an equal footing with Jutta who, as an anchoress, was required to stay in her cell till death, with no hope of ever leaving it. The justification for committing a 7-year-old child to such a life (even if that is not how it turned out in Hildegard’s case) may have rested on the assumption that the present was but a moment in eternity and that a life of such strict enclosure was the most certain way of attaining everlasting bliss.
Thus the scene from an altar in the Rochuskapelle in Bingen showing Hildegard’s parents, sumptuously dressed in the styles of the fourteenth century, presenting their daughter to three Benedictine nuns who look no more formidable than the reception committee of a boarding school, suggests too optimistic a view of the matter. Nor does the fresco from the Abbey church at Eibingen, though considerably more austere and accurate as to clothes and general background, sufficiently convey the awesome nature of the transaction.
The enclosure of anchorites was a solemn liturgical rite, performed, where possible, by the bishop. Guibert of Gembloux gives a partial description of the rite which can be supplemented from an English pontifical of the twelfth century.16 He writes:
the day fixed for the induction came [1st November—All Souls’ Day—according to the Annals] and with people of both high and low degree standing by, in the manner of those who are given over for the last offices of funeral rites…with lighted torches…they were buried by the abbot of the place and me brothers, as if truly dead to the world.
The comparison between entering the anchorage and burial was not idly made. As well as employing hymns and responses from the burial service, it was customary for the priest to rehearse the commendations of the soul made at the funeral ‘as far as the placing of the deceased on the bier’, in case the recluse died enclosed without benefit of this sacred service. After the main part of the service was over, the house had been blessed, and the choirs had withdrawn, the priest remained a little while to exhort the inmate to rise up in obedience and finish her life in the same way. Then he left, the door was blocked up, and the people departed.
III
What manner of life did the inmates of the cell lead? Judging by what happened later and because of the proximity of the monks, it seems likely that the Benedictine Rule was taken as their principal guide from the beginning. Once more our sources describe life in the anchorage only in the most conventional and general terms. Jutta, Godfrey writes,
carefully introduced her to the habit of humility and innocence. She taught her the psalms of David and showed her how to give praise on the ten-stringed psaltery. (Vita, Bk 1)
From this we should understand not that Hildegard merely learned the psalms by rote, but that she was taught to read by Jutta. The psalter was the universal primer of the Middle Ages. Psalters were often owned and read by laywomen. The English anchorite Christina of Markyate seems to have spent most of her time reading the psalter when not engaged in manual work such as embroidery. Hildegard, it seems, did more than read the psalms.
If the reference to the psaltery is to a real instrument, rather than a biblical allusion to the psalms themselves, then music also formed part of her early education.17 We should not forget the influence of the monks’ services, which, according to Guibert, Jutta could hear by day and night. The Benedictine chant must have formed a background to Hildegard’s life and thought, whether she took an active part in it or merely overheard it. She may, of course, have done both at different times.
Let us then suppose that Jutta and her companions followed, more or less closely, the order of the monks’ day. This was structured around the regular performance of the eight offices of the Opus Dei (The Work of God), as originally prescribed in the Benedictine Rule, although variations had been introduced over the years and in different places. The original impulse for the ordering of monastic worship seems to have stemmed from two passages in Psalm 118 which read: ‘Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous judgments’ and ‘At midnight will I rise to give thanks unto thee’. Since the timing of the offices depended on the Roman method of time-keeping, whereby the periods of daylight and darkness were each divided into twelve ‘hours’, the times at which the offices were held varied according to the season of the year, as indeed did the absolute length of each ‘hour’.
A typical winter’s day would begin at about 2 a.m. when all (monks and oblates alike) rose for the office of matins. This was the longest and most complicated of the offices and was meant to accommodate an entire repetition of the 150 psalms of the psalter each week. After matins there was a short interval before lauds, recited at first light, followed by prime at sunrise. The day offices were shorter than those of the night and were held at the first, third, sixth, and ninth hours, hence the names: prime, terce, sext, none. The evening office, vespers, was meant to be held while it was still light, and the day ended at sunset with compline.
Clearly, it would have been very difficult for an anchoress living in isolation to perform the full Opus Dei by herself because of the problems of time-keeping. Monasteries were accustomed to detail monks to stay awake to make sure that the night offices were held at the right time. On the other hand, if the cell were attached to a larger monastery, the bells sounded to wake the monks might have served the women as well.
Even if Jutta followed the full round of canonical hours there would have been some time left over. The Benedictine Rule prescribed both prayer and work for its followers. The interpretation of the work component changed over the centuries. Manual labour undertaken to support the monastery (which seems not to have been always envisaged even in Benedict’s time—he found it necessary to include a warning to the monks about grumbling if they had to take in the harvest) had become increasingly attenuated as servants and tenants came to perform the necessary manual tasks. Intellectual and artistic work connected with the writing and production of books began quite early to play a larger part in the monk’s day.
Instructions for those leading a solitary life pay particular attention to the necessity for keeping occupied—possibly because it was unrealistic to expect them to follow the complete Benedictine timetable of prayer on their own. Thus Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, wrote to advise a recluse against such dangers as pride and laziness and suggested that a suitable activity for the time not devoted to prayer might be copying the scriptures or, if this was too hard on the eyes (as well it might be in an ill-lit cell), making combs, boxes and wooden cups, rush mats, or osier baskets.18 Aelred of Rievaulx, in the Rule that he wrote for his sister, also suggested what should be avoided and what practised by the anchoress. Interestingly enough, he decrees that the teaching of children, which would turn ‘the cell into a school’, is to be avoided, apparently because of the human interactions involved. It seems probable that he would also have disapproved of Jutta’s reception and education of Hildegard in the cell at Disibodenberg. On the positive side, he advised his sister to vary her prayers and meditations with manual work, although he does not specify what kind. The only activity that the biographer of Christina of Markyate actually describes her engaged upon in her refuge is the reading of the psalter. However, it is also recorded in the Gesta Abbatum that she sent three mitres and a pair of sandals embroidered by her own hands to Pope Hadrian.19
Abelard, too, had some suggestions about the sort of work nuns might be expected to perform. The division was largely along traditional gender lines. Women might tend such animals as cows and poultry, and wash and mend the altar linen and monks’ clothes. Obviously, some of these activities would be more appropriately performed in a convent of women rather than a narrowly-enclosed recluse’s cell. Aelred, on the other hand, says that solitaries should not keep animals. Gilbert of Sempringham seems to have intended his nuns for a life of prayer and meditation, entirely free from manual work, except, possibly, for copying of manuscripts and some sewing, judging by the care he took to provide them with laysisters and laybrothers to look after the internal and external needs of the community and canons to see to their spiritual welfare.
Concerning the practical details of Hildegard’s early religious life, we learn from Godfrey that she was raised on a frugal diet and simply clothed. Once more such a description accords with the spirit of the Benedictine Rule. Indeed, it seems likely that the cell was provisioned directly from the monastic kitchens. In that case the food supply would have been secure, if not particularly varied or exciting. This was no doubt preferable to having to rely on the possibly erratic generosity of the neighbouring populace. The biography of the English anchorite Wulfric of Haselbury has several rather unedifying episodes which seemingly arose from his anxiety to maintain his food sources.20
The Benedictine Rule provided for a single meal in winter and two in summer, consisting of two cooked dishes followed by vegetables or fruit and bread. No meat from four-footed animals was to be eaten, except by the sick or very weak. The cooked dishes were generally concocted from beans, eggs, fish, or cheese. The stringency of the diet differed according to the liturgical year. Once more, a good deal of discretion was allowed, or at least had become customary, to individual monasteries in dietary matters. At the monastery of Cluny, for instance, according to an eleventh-century account, the regime for summer would consist of two meals per day. At the first there would be a dish of dried beans, a course of cheese or eggs which was replaced by fish on Thursday, Sunday, and feast days, and a third course of whatever vegetables and fruit were available. On great feast days there were onions and little cakes instead of beans. An allowance of about a pound of bread a day was given, and more at supper if required. On fasting days (which included Wednesdays and Fridays, from Pentecost to 14 September, and every weekday thereafter till Lent) only one meal was served at about 3 p.m. On canonical fast days it was even later. Since the Rule took into account the special needs of the very young and the very old, it was usual for children to be given some sort of breakfast to get them through the long day, if only a drink and some bread.
Aelred bases his description of the anchoress’s food explicitly on the allowance of ‘blessed Benedict’.
It is interesting to compare such a regime with what Hildegard wrote later in her medical works about dietary matters. On the whole her remarks agree with the Benedictine prescriptions. She suggests that for the sake of good digestion the first meal of the day should be taken around noon. Breakfast is only conceded to those who are weak, debilitated, or deficient in body so that they can obtain strength from the food. Supper, of the same kind of food which was eaten during the day, should be taken early in the evening, so that it is possible to go for a walk before bed (Causae et curae, Bk 2). This raises the question of what form of exercise was available to the inmates of the cell at Disibodenberg. It seems probable that there was little scope for walking there; such places were referred to as ‘prisons’ for good reasons. Hildegard, evidently, thought that women did not require as much physical exercise as men, but presumably a minimum was necessary even to them for good health.
Hildegard also has some interesting things to say about the relative merits of different beverages. Water, she suggests, is not to be taken in winter, and only in moderation and by healthy people in summer. Considering the dubious nature of most medieval water supplies this advice is probably quite sound. Beer and wine are her preferred drinks as she considers them better for weak constitutions. Beer, she claims, gives a lovely colour to the face and makes you fatter. Doubtless German monasteries brewed their own beer even in winegrowing districts. The Institutions of St Gilbert are very clear on the matter, having a special chapter to deal with the misfortune of the nuns being reduced to drinking water instead of beer.
On the matter of clothing, the Benedictine Rule, being written for monks, will not serve as a guide to Hildegard’s practice, except in the spirit. The chief aim was to avoid ostentation and expensive materials. Clothes that could lead to vanity, thought to be an especial failing among women, were particularly to be avoided. Thus Aelred prescribes a veil of some dark colour to be worn, not of variegated or expensive material. Some rules also prescribed the number of each kind of garment which was allowed. Thus Aelred suggests that one tunic and two undergarments should be sufficient, while Gilbert of Sempringham shows himself quite prodigal by his allowance of five tunics, although he prescribes only one undergarment. Cloaks of wool, or sheepskin, were to be used instead of furs. There is a description in the biography of Christina of Markyate of how she put off the silks and furs of her former life when she donned the rough habit of a recluse.
Thus the kind of life Hildegard led at Disibodenberg during the first eight years of her vocation, her childhood, we might say, can only be reconstructed in the most conjectural manner. It could be seen as a series of contrasts or even paradoxes. On the one hand, it was a life of isolation and silence; on the other, a life lived in close proximity to a woman of some spiritual and worldly distinction, probably indeed, a closer relationship than she might have had growing up in an ordinary household. It was a life of physical austerity in terms of food and surroundings, yet one where the food supply was constant and the immediate environment secure. Finally, it was a life where intellectual horizons may have been limited, yet one which was potentially in touch with the entire tradition of Benedictine culture because of the physical proximity of the cell to the monastery. To what extent Hildegard was able to avail herself of this potential is another question.
For reasons which will be clear later, Hildegard tended to play down the human element in her educational formation. Yet it is hard to believe that there was no cultural interchange between the monastery and the anchorage. For one thing, spiritual direction would be needed, a confessor at least, presuming that it did not all devolve upon Jutta. We may recall Gilbert of Sempringham who visited his nuns for the purpose of religious instruction. Hildegard, indeed, mentions that she had chosen for herself a magister from among the monks, a title which presupposes some sort of instruction, and there is nothing to limit it to spiritual direction. Intellectual instruction, for spiritual ends, was no doubt also possible.
All the sources relate that as time went on (unfortunately none is more specific) the fame of Jutta and her pupil attracted other aspirants to the community. Thus the transformation of the cell into a small Benedictine nunnery was effected by degrees. Such growth no doubt had positive consequences for its members, not least Hildegard. Rather than being completely dependent upon the monks for food, liturgical services, and religious instruction, with a greater number of recruits more of these activities could be carried out by the nuns themselves. There would also be possibilities for increased leadership and responsibility. Living space may also have been enlarged although just where they could have expanded on the site is hard to determine.
Henceforth entrants to the convent would be admitted as nuns, rather than enclosed as anchoresses. The ceremony for the profession or veiling of nuns was also a solemn liturgical occasion, only to be undertaken at certain times of the year and requiring the participation of the bishop. (In this it differed from the ceremony for the clothing of a monk, which could be performed by the abbot.) At the mass, the habit and veil of the postulant were placed on the altar to be blessed by the bishop. Having retrieved the habit and put it on, the candidate approached the altar holding a lighted candle. The bishop then placed the veil on her head with an exhortation to virginity and continence. The prayers that follow are elaborations of this theme. Divine aid is invoked to ensure that the nun will become one of the wise virgins awaiting the arrival of the heavenly spouse and ultimately be numbered among the 144,000 following the Lamb.21
From the time of her adolescence, then, Hildegard was a member of what amounted to a double monastery, although it is probable that the women’s community was much smaller than that of the men and therefore subordinate in ways additional to those usual for such institutions at the time. That the monks were prepared to countenance such a development may appear to conflict with the commonly held belief that association with women, even in the form of an enclosed convent, presented great dangers to monastic life.
Despite such notions, the needs of women religious did not go entirely unrecognized and there are many examples of double monasteries among the Benedictines, especially in Germany, not to mention new experiments elsewhere such as that of Robert of Arbrissel at Fontevrault. Such ambivalence towards monastic provision for women is succinctly illustrated by the Annales Rodenses which describe the founding of a double monastery at Rolduc. After some years the nuns were sent off to a place at a distance from the original house as it was thought unfitting for monks and nuns to inhabit the same site. However, this decision was reversed by the next abbot, who installed a smaller number of nuns on the original monastic site, with the explanation that the Bible enjoined the spiritual life on both sexes.22
Since Disibodenberg, when it was refounded at the turn of the twelfth century, was not intended as a double monastery, it is difficult to ascertain how things were arranged to accommodate both monks and nuns. Probably there was no provision made for dividing the church into two sides, as was done at Sempringham, or even for separate chapter houses, as seems to have been the case at Schönau. The buildings there must have been duplicated since Elisabeth of Schönau is often described as being alone in the chapter house. Presumably this was one set apart for the nuns’ use and not frequented by the monks. It also seems that the nuns at Schönau used an oratory and not the monastic church of St Florian. However, when Jutta died it was in the chapter house of the monks that she was first buried, before her later promotion to the Chapel of St Mary.
Nor should it be forgotten that extensive renovations and rebuilding were carried out on the site during the time of Hildegard’s residence there. The bald statements of the Disibodenberg chronicler announcing the dedication of the principal altars of the new church and other buildings such as the infirmary do not give an adequate idea of the disruption and confused activity which must have been experienced for years while the building work was in train. In such circumstances it is hard to see how strict enclosure and isolation from the male side of the community would have been possible. The way of life described in the custumals, such as that of Sempringham, must have been the ideal rather than the reality.
Indeed, details from the works of Elisabeth of Schönau suggest that a more relaxed form of association was common in German double monasteries.23 We have, for example, a picture of Elisabeth leaning out of her window to talk to a monk and a description of a group of nuns standing in conversation around a priest on his way to bring the reserved elements to a sick nun. Elisabeth knows the names and recognizes the faces of certain members of the male community when she sees them in a vision. Such evidence suggests that the relationship between monks and nuns in a double monastery might be less than rigorously controlled. In Hildegard’s case we have the example of her teacher and later, secretary, the monk Volmar. It is unlikely that Volmar was much older than Hildegard, since he died when she was over 70, or much younger, either, if their association began when Hildegard herself was quite young.
Some idea of the kinds of activities Hildegard might have been involved in during the early years of her profession can be inferred from her later achievements. One area of activity may well have been that of musical production. As the women’s numbers increased it would have been possible for them to perform the Opus Dei themselves, rather than being passive spectators and auditors of the monks. Expertise in this area might easily have led Hildegard to try her hand at supplying the needs of her community in the same way that Abelard provided hymns for Heloise at the convent of the Paraclete.
A second activity in which Hildegard might well have been involved was medical practice. Medical skills were cultivated within the monastery for use on its inmates and reached such a high level that Benedictine monks became (in England, at least) royal physicians. A decree of Pope Alexander III, forbidding such outside practice, suggests it was widespread. Such a decree would not, however, have had much effect on the numbers of people who came to monasteries seeking cures, whether by natural or supernatural means. These circumstances may, for instance, explain Hildegard’s acquaintance with certain gynaecological and obstetric matters that we might not otherwise expect her to have encountered within the convent.
In short, developments at Disibodenberg, in which the expansion of the cell played no little part, must have presented opportunities for the deployment of different skills and interests and given a sense of expanding vistas. While something could be seen from the window of an anchorite’s cell, much more could be viewed from the gates of the enclosure where the sick were tended; a greater sense of one’s own powers could be derived from writing and singing one’s own praise to God than hearing it always sung by the monks, or by instructing new members of the community rather than being always the pupil.
Hildegard herself remarked on the fact that at this time her health seemed to have improved and she had reached vigorous maturity. This sense of vigour and maturity seems to have been linked in her thought with the progress and recognition of her visionary powers. Perhaps it is not surprising to find that in these years she was able to confide in Jutta and through her, in Volmar, and this degree of recognition, limited though it was, had something to do with her general well-being.
Also to this period of expansion belongs the death of Jutta in 1136, an event of which Hildegard makes surprisingly little. Although she describes her in glowing spiritual terms, the human element is somewhat lacking, in contrast to the account of her sorrow at the death of Volmar. Hildegard was the obvious successor to Jutta, and so she was elected by the community to be magistra or mistress of the nuns. What authority this position conferred on Hildegard is difficult to assess. It is clear that the nuns, including Hildegard, were subject to the authority of the abbot while they were at Disibodenberg, both with regard to financial affairs—the disposal of the nuns’ dowries—and spiritual matters, including whether Hildegard was to commit her visions to writing. Thus Hildegard’s sense of developing power and autonomy must have been somewhat tempered by the recognition that women were ever, in practical as well as other ways, dependent upon, and hence subject to, men.