~Year of Our Lord 1178: Autumn~
I am digging a grave. Not my own, though I am eighty years old and my joints ache. Not, indeed, a resting place for the mortal remains of any man or woman. If it were necessary to bury the departed, I would call upon one of the younger, fitter sisters, or upon one of our lay assistants. Berthe, for instance, has the brawny arms of a countrywoman and can carry a pair of milk pails as if they weighed no more than a couple of breviaries.
I am digging to hide the grave of a repentant sinner. Matthias was his name. Yes, he was excommunicated for his wrongdoing. But he died repentant. He received absolution. So he lies, as he should, in hallowed ground within our convent walls at Rupertsberg. We laid him to rest in the shade of a yew and sang a psalm.
May God rest his soul. If the church authorities in Mainz have their way, his bones will not lie tranquil long.
My blood boils at the thought. I pause in my labours to pray for a quiet heart, for self-discipline, for humility. Around me the garden rings with birdsong. And now, beneath those high avian voices weave those of my sisters from the chapel, singing a hymn to the Virgin; a hymn of my own composition. Ave generosa, gloriosa et intacta puella. This is a place of peace; Our Lady walks here. I pray for a spirit free from anger, and for the ability to know with certainty which decisions are God’s and which my own.
A voice within me whispers, Did you ever know that, Hildegard? Surely you thought it unlikely that God would choose a frail woman—a sickly child, you were when it began—to be the recipient of His divine wisdom. Did you not sometimes wonder if the visions and messages and ideas sprang, not from Heaven, but purely from your own imagination?
“Begone,” I mutter aloud, driving in the spade with all the vigour I can summon. “You are the voice of the devil, and you must know by now that I am too old and stubborn to listen to you. Besides, I’m busy.”
“Sister Hildegard?”
I start as one of the young novices appears on the pathway beside me. It’s hard to straighten up. My body does not obey me as it once did.
“Let me help,” says the girl, reaching for the spade. What is her name, Agnes? Mathilde? I cannot recall. “You should rest—you should go in and sit down—”
The voices float out from the chapel, high and true. The girl looks at me; I look back at her.
“We’re missing Terce,” she says.
“God will be content to hear our prayers under the trees, with earth on our hands.” Ah! I’ve remembered her name. “Shall we kneel, Sister Barbara?”
We lift our voices in song. I can no longer reach the high register required by this hymn; I did not compose it for old women. I restrict myself to the final, providing a sort of drone. Barbara surprises me. She tackles the melismatic chant with perfect confidence, every note clear and accurate despite the wide range of the melody and the particular challenges of the third mode. The birds continue their distinctive contribution.
I had a good voice once. God has many ways of teaching us humility.
The hymn over, we rise to our feet. Our habits are muddy, our sandals clogged with earth.
“You are something of a musician,” I tell my companion.
Sister Barbara blushes and holds her silence. Instructed, no doubt, to avoid prideful thinking. We have many talented women here; if our reputation for piety and scholarship does not draw them to this particular convent, our music surely does.
“Lift that voice of yours only in praise of God,” I say, “and there’s no more personal pride in you than there is in those birds up in the trees. Like yours, their song is a song of joy. Joy in God’s creation. Joy in being alive and free.”
“Sister Hildegard,” says Barbara, “please let me do the digging.”
I sit on the bench and watch her awhile. She understands the task. Word has got around, no doubt, of my fury at the letter from the bishops: a letter ordering me to have poor Matthias’s earthly remains dug up and removed from hallowed ground. A letter stating in blunt terms that if I refuse, they will send someone to do it for me.
So we are turning a gravesite into a vegetable garden. Seedlings await their places; stakes and cord lie ready for neat bean-rows. We may even fashion a clerical scarecrow. Matthias had farms, crops, animals. He’ll forgive us a cabbage or two.
I measure out my breathing. Slowly, my calm returns. I close my eyes, considering the difficult question that never quite leaves my mind: Did you ever lie about your visions? Once they were credited by the Holy Father as true, did you ever interpret them in ways that would serve your own ends? There’s no denying they were often convenient. I let myself drift back into the past. Many, many years…almost a lifetime of years…
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I was seven when they enclosed me with Jutta in her cell at Disibodenberg monastery. It was meant to be for life. I thought the anchoress looked like an angel, and on that first day I told her so. Jutta chided me, gently, for presuming to know how an angel might appear. I told her I did know; I had seen them. It was not a lie.
When I was a little older, and understood what the life of an anchoress was, I realised that my mother and father, in their decision to commit me to enclosure at such a tender age, had not been cruel and unfeeling as some might have thought. They had done me a great service. In locking me away, they granted me the lifelong gift of freedom. Freedom to learn; freedom to think; freedom to create. Freedom to love God with all I had to give.
By the time I was seventeen, there were twelve of us sharing the cell. I no longer spoke of my visions. Among my sisters, and even among the monks of that foundation, there were some who believed that what I told them was self-aggrandisement or the product of an undisciplined imagination. Others thought I suffered from a disorder of both body and mind. True, when the visions came I had a kind of fit, or so folk told me. My body went rigid or fell into trembling spasms, and although my eyes were open, I did not see what was before me in the real world. I looked into God’s world; I saw what He wished me to see. I was indeed an unlikely vessel for His wisdom. But there it was. In the beginning the visions came unsought. They overtook me; they left me much weakened in body. But in spirit, much refreshed and full of wonder. Full of the need to share my new insights.
But I learned to keep silent, knowing I would be misjudged. Hildegard is in frail health, they said. She has never been strong. With the wisdom of my eighty years, I believe that they were only half right.
When I was twenty-seven, our number had grown to sixteen and the confines of the cell, even with its two chambers, became intolerable. I had by then negotiated access to the monastery garden at certain times of day, though Jutta held firm in her vow of seclusion and would not go out. A new door was made, with its bolt on the inside, and we had the freedom to come in and out at our own choosing. A privy was constructed for our exclusive use; the old system with the buckets was abandoned. The general health of the sisters improved greatly with the increased sunshine and fresh air. We grew vegetables. We kept chickens. On the subject of my visions I held my silence.
By the time I was thirty-seven, Jutta’s health was
uncertain; the beautiful young woman of my childhood had become
worn and weary. There were five-and-twenty sisters living in the
cell; I had persuaded Abbot Kuno to extend our quarters when other
parts of Disibodenberg were rebuilt. But the requests kept coming,
for another girl to join us, and another. They were drawn by
Jutta’s piety.
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“Sister Hildegard?”
Young Barbara’s voice breaks into my thoughts. I sit up with a start, and see on her face that she thinks I have fallen asleep.
“Shall I begin putting in the seedlings?” she asks.
She has done a good job of preparing the garden; she’s dug over three times the area I could manage in the same time. Who would know, now, where the repentant sinner Matthias lies? Under this fertile soil rest both nuns of our convent and local folk of noble family, buried since we made the move to Rupertsberg. A contentious move, opposed by Abbot Kuno and the brethren, since our departure from their foundation meant the loss not only of our good selves, but of the endowments we brought with us when we entered the religious life. But God had shown me what I must do. The vision was powerful. It was plain that God intended me to take my sisters over the river where we would form our own foundation in order to provide succour and ministry to the community at large. We were to leave the comforts of Disibodenberg and fend for ourselves in far poorer surroundings. And we would offer burial within our walls to worthy Christian folk of the district.
I explained this to the Abbot. I told him we would take our few possessions, the wherewithal to establish a small scriptorium, a library, an infirmary where we might treat both our own sick and those of the community. We would take what was required to maintain ourselves in simple fashion, and we would uplift ourselves to Rupertsberg in the district of Bingen.
Abbot Kuno refused outright. Having expected this, I did not engage him in a war of words. I did not accuse him of venal motives. Instead I wrote letters to folk who could help me, folk of influence. Letters had long been my strength, my way of reaching out to make change in the world from within my convent walls. Through letters, as much as through the books I have written, I have been able to pass on the wisdom God has given me, as to how a life should best be lived, how a church or a monastic foundation should best be governed, how God might wish us poor men and women to act and speak and deal with one another during our brief span on earth.
I did not speak to Abbot Kuno on the matter again, for very soon after he refused me I was overtaken by another vision, this time so strong that it lasted from one evening’s Vespers until the next day’s Prime. They told me, afterwards, that my body had lain rigid on my bed, and that my eyes had remained open but unseeing as first my sisters, then my dear mentor and friend Brother Volmar—oh, how I still miss him—then the monastery’s Infirmarian, and lastly the Abbot himself came to my cell to witness it. That was a remarkable visitation, so powerful that I was not able to write of it with any clarity until much later. A divine correction, Kuno called it. He had no choice, afterwards, but to relent in the matter of our move to Rupertsberg.
We raised the funds to buy our chosen land—many of our sisters are from wealthy families—and removed ourselves as promptly as we could to Bingen, and to the then somewhat dilapidated accommodation here at Rupertsberg. Our convent grew; it is no longer the makeshift establishment of those early days. I will die within these walls. Perhaps next winter, perhaps the one after; my bones grow weary. Will my sisters plant cabbages on my grave? I believe I would prefer herbs. Rosemary, for a strong woman. Sweet alyssum, to moderate anger. Bay for healing. Chamomile to bring me peaceful sleep.
My mind has been wandering again. Sister Barbara has been joined by two others, and the cabbage seedlings are going in, row on neat row. They’ll be bedded in straw to keep out both the chill and the caterpillars. God willing, I will see them grow full and healthy; I will be here to enjoy a hearty cabbage soup. We have good cooks among our lay helpers.
“Sister Hildegard?” Barbara holds my little sack of herb roots and seedlings, ready for planting. Cress, winter purslane, sorrel, parsley. In spring I will add comfrey, a herb that not only forms a fine basis for compost, but also deters insects fond of a leaf diet. Have I time to write a new book on herbs, an extension of my Natural History? My hands are crabbed with age; I can no longer hold a steady quill. If only Volmar had lived a little longer… I have Guibert, of course, and Guibert has his uses. But there is nobody like Volmar. If not for that kind and clever man, I would never have had the courage to speak out about my visions. Not once did he doubt me; not once did he patronise me. He guided me as no other ever did, for Jutta, well-meaning soul as she was, was limited in her scholarship. Were it not for Volmar, I would never have recorded in writing the divine secrets God had shown me since I was a little child. I would not have reached out to the world through my books and my letters, and the world would not have come to me. Who would have believed, when Volmar first took on the duty of teaching me a scholar’s Latin, that in time the Holy Father himself would hear of my writings, and would read parts of Scivias, and would officially declare my visions genuine?
“Sister Hildegard, would you like to plant these yourself?”
Sister Barbara brings me back to the here and now once more. This girl may be young, but her instincts are sound. She does not know me well; cannot, as her time in the convent has been short. But she sees that I am no doddery old woman, content to sit by and watch while others work. Busy hands keep the mind alert. I will not let my faculties wither and fade away. Barbara recognises that within the carapace of a wrinkled ancient, I am still the same woman I was when young. But wiser. I hope I am wise enough to deal with whatever may come from this day’s work. One thing I know: the bishops will be much displeased.
The herbs go in at each corner of the new garden plot. I tuck the last seedling in place, dust off my hands then rise with some difficulty to my feet. Barbara hovers; she will not help me up unless I ask her to.
“A good job, Sister,” I say. “Tell me, can you read and write?” Her voice and manner indicate she is of good family; her singing suggests a young lady’s education.
“Yes, Sister Hildegard. My Latin is rather limited, but I can read it quite well, and I can read and write in German.”
“Good. I’ll arrange for Brother Guibert to give you some further tuition in Latin; he may grumble a little, but we need scholarly women here as well as pious ones. What about the notation of music? Have you ever learned that?”
Her cheeks have turned pink again. “I can read music, Sister Hildegard. I have not had the opportunity to write it. I would like that very much—that is, if I can help the work of the convent by learning that skill, I would be glad to do so.”
I recognise a kindred spirit; she is struggling for humility as I have done on more occasions than I can count. “This must be with Sister Elisabeth’s permission, of course.” Elisabeth is our Mistress of Novices; she will do as I bid her.
“Of course.” Barbara is trying to suppress a grin of pure delight. “Thank you, Sister Hildegard.”
“The best thanks you can give me will be to work hard, learn quickly, then use your gifts in the service of God. And to be brave, Sister. Brave in the face of those who doubt you; brave in the face of those who mock you; brave in the face of those who consider you weak, unworthy or ignorant. Brave in the face of those who do not believe a woman can have her own voice.”
“But you—” she starts, then holds back her words. What was she going to say? But you surely never had to deal with that? You are so highly regarded—who would ever have doubted you?
“Best go now and wash your hands,” I say. “I will speak to Sister Elisabeth later today. No point in wasting time.”
~Year of Our Lord 1179: Spring~
Three written requests over winter, each less courteous than the last. One group of clergy from Mainz, knocking on our gates. They asked to inspect our burial ground, but if they thought the placement of the vegetable garden odd, they did not say so. They confronted me in the privacy of our library. I responded that in the matter of Matthias’s burial, as in all matters, I would not act against God’s will. The clerics stayed for supper. We fed them cabbage soup.
And now, a letter from the church authorities. I expected castigation. I anticipated some form of punishment. But this… How can this be borne?
I break the news to my sisters at the supper table, in place of the usual reading from scripture. I can hardly bring myself to say it. With an effort I make my voice steady. “Sisters, it is an interdict. From this moment on, we are forbidden to celebrate Mass at Rupertsberg. The Divine Office may no longer be sung before a congregation. Indeed, it may not be sung at all. We must whisper or murmur, and only behind closed doors.”
My sisters gasp in distress; their faces are stricken. The music is our spirit. It is the powerful voice of God, sounding from our weak human instruments. It is joy and celebration, adoration and mystery, sacred discipline and spiritual freedom. Our music is everything.
“Sisters,” I tell them, “I will pray for God’s guidance. You must do the same. Meanwhile, if you would not risk excommunication, you must abide by the interdict, as I will. We will not hear the music with our ears; but it will sound in our souls.”
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I pray for a vision. I pray for some wisdom to illuminate the way forwards. The interdict is a dark cloud hanging over Rupertsberg—not only over my sisters and me, but over the good folk accustomed to making their way up the hill to hear us sing Mass, the folk whose daughters, drawn at least in part by our music, have chosen to join us and dedicate their lives to God. This has cut a jagged rent in our whole community. How can anyone believe it is God’s will?
I spend long hours on my knees, so long that I become too ill to continue, and must submit to the ministrations of our Infirmarian, Sister Clothilde. She tells me I should remember my age and not expect so much of myself. My response is somewhat short.
In the past, in times of strife or crisis, I have prayed for divine guidance, and it has always come. God has sent me a vision, often hard to understand, but containing the seeds of wisdom I needed, provided I could interpret them correctly. This time there is no illumination. As I have grown older, God has chosen to visit me in this way less and less often. I am too close, perhaps, to the moment when I will see Him face to face and make my final confession. But I wish He would grant me just one more answer. If not for myself, then for my sisters, for young Barbara and the other girls whom I have set to work with Brother Guibert, to be educated as the clever young men of a monastery might be. What Guibert does not teach them—how to speak up, how to be heard—I will impart myself. But I want them to have the music, too, for the scholarship is hard work, and the music is sheer joy.
I hope I am not selfish. But I would be well pleased if, after I die, my sisters might lay me in earth to O quam mirabilis in my own composition. I hope I am not arrogant.
Though I have respected the church authorities all my life, as was proper, I have never lain down and let them walk over me. I will not do so now. Only, in the past, I have always had the strength of my visions, sanctioned by the Pope himself. That authority, backed up by my sound arguments, has rendered me persuasive. But this time God remains silent, and therefore so do we. Our Divine Office is a sorry thing, conducted with sombre faces and in an undertone. We move about like sad ghosts; the whispering extends itself to daily conversation, as if our natural energy has been somehow dampened. An odd phenomenon; I wonder if I have time to write about it?
As I lie sleepless on my pallet, waiting for the vision that does not come, I hear that insidious voice again. Use your imagination, Hildegard! Create what you need. Tell the authorities God wants the interdict lifted. Invent a vision to fit; you’re more than capable of that. Indeed, you’re a fool not to do so. What harm will it do?
I do not dignify this with an answer. I will die soon; if he thinks I want to die with a lie of that magnitude on my conscience, it’s the devil who is a fool. But I am tempted, all the same. It would indeed be easy. And my heart aches to think that my last days will be devoid of music. Besides, I am quite certain I am right. Why would God want this interdict? God forgives sinners as long as they repent. Matthias repented; he was absolved. Therefore he should lie in hallowed ground. Why would God want our voices silenced?
To teach you humility, Hildegard. This is what I hear as I fall asleep at last, but whether the voice is God’s or that of my own conscience, I cannot tell.
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Days pass, and the grey silence that has fallen over Rupertsberg remains unabated. I pray each night for a vision, and nothing comes. I wish God had devised a lesson in humility that did not extend itself to our entire community.
Guibert tells me he is writing an account of my life and works. I cannot imagine what will be in it. I hope Guibert’s book does not end with the convent in silence and myself dead in my cell, taken while still praying for answers. I tell my scholarly brother, as courteously as I can, that I would greatly prefer him to spend his time teaching our young women, who are soaking up their learning eagerly. I tell him I trust their education will continue once I am gone, and that I am taking steps to ensure that will happen. Guibert smiles a little strangely, and says he hopes he can find time for both. How odd to think that folk will learn of my life through that man’s words. I wish Volmar had written my life instead.
I sit at my desk with quill, ink and parchment before me, knowing that any letter I write will not be in the clear hand I learned long ago, but in the uncertain script of a sick old woman. I should ask one of the others to pen it for me. But I cannot. I am on the verge of giving in to the devil’s counsel and writing a lie. This has gone on too long, this silence, these whispers, the feelings of shame and unworthiness that come with the interdict, when we have done nothing but follow God’s word. Is there a way to write this letter without fabricating a vision? The quill shakes in my hand; ink splashes onto the parchment, a careless waste of precious materials. I cannot do it.
Sister Clothilde makes me take a draught to ease the pain in my joints and help me sleep. At first I refuse it; if God wanted me to be without pain, he would not visit on me the maladies of old age. Clothilde reminds me that I myself set out the ingredients for this potion in my Natural History, making especial note of its efficacy for conditions such as the one from which I currently suffer. I swallow the draught, if only so that she will leave me in peace. I lie down on my pallet. Dear God, let me have the blessing of music once more before I die.
I sleep, and dream. I dream of angels, rank on rank of them, and if their faces are beautiful to behold, their voices are beyond loveliness. I see among them my beloved friend Volmar, and Sister Richardis who was so dear to me. I see my mother and father, my departed brothers. I see Jutta, a young woman as she was when first she took the child Hildegard under her wing, and I see Matthias the repentant sinner and many others, their faces familiar, their names forgotten. The singing rises and falls in patterns too complex to analyse, celestial, transformative, rich with the mystery of God; a music far beyond the human voice. When I wake before dawn, my old cheeks are bathed in tears. Dear God! You have given me a foretaste of Heaven.
I write my letter. It is to Archbishop Christian of Mainz, and it takes a very long time. But I will not entrust this to a younger, firmer hand; I must do it myself. There is no longer any need to pray for a vision. The dream has brought me the arguments I require, clear and perfect in every detail.
In the past, however hot my anger, however pressing my need to see justice done, I have kept the tone of my letters humble, courteous, self-effacing. Always, my missives have spoken of God’s will, not the will of Hildegard. I have done my best to be His true servant.
This time my voice is less conciliatory. I set out, first, the doctrinal arguments in support of my decision to provide Matthias with burial in hallowed ground. I tell the Archbishop of the shadow that lies over our convent now that our music has been silenced. I speak of Adam’s voice as he sang in the Garden, before the Fall—so pure and powerful that we weak mortals could not have borne to hear it. Truly the voice of an angel. I tell how God in His wisdom allows the faithful to raise their lesser voices in songs of praise, and to compose music, and to make instruments on which it may be played—weak echoes of that first voice, indeed, but nonetheless gifts of beauty and meaning. It is God’s intention that we use them in His praise. I expound on that point at some length.
The devil, I write, is driven mad by such music, for in it he hears the divine beauty of that which he left behind when he quit the Heavenly realm, and it is to him a torment and punishment. So he seeks to silence it, by setting ill thoughts in the hearts of certain authorities, and leading them to acts of repression against those who would lift their voices in the adoration of God.
My quill moves more quickly now, urged forward by the argument that stirs my blood. I end my letter with the wisdom of last night’s wondrous dream. Those who silence the praise of God without sound reason, I write, should beware. For when, after death, they rise to Heaven, they will find themselves unable to hear the voices of the angels. God in His eternal wisdom has shown this to His humble servant, this weak woman, I write, reverting briefly to my more usual mode of expression. There is no need to state precisely how God has done so. No need to mention that this time, it was not through a vision. My heart tells me that the dream, as clear and direct as Sister Barbara’s soaring voice, was a gift straight from Heaven.
The letter is finished. I sign it: Hildegard of Bingen. In orderly fashion I sprinkle the parchment with sand to help it dry; wipe the quill; cap the inkpot. My heart is beating too fast. Angelic music rings in my mind, though the scriptorium is silent save for the voices of birds out in the garden. I sit awhile, breathing slowly, thanking God for my life, for the visions, for the music and the scholarship and the fine friends along the way. For the warmth of morning sun; for the taste of vegetables fresh from the garden; for the smiles of young women who love learning. I thank Him for the gift of a good intellect and the opportunity to use it. I thank Him for the challenges—there have been many—and the strength I have gained from them. I wonder, for a little, what course my life might have taken had I spoken out about the visions when I was younger, and not waited to share them until my life was half over. What will Guibert put in his book about those thirty years of silence? I do not suppose I will be here to read it. Dear God, I pray, let this letter achieve its purpose. Allow an old woman one selfish wish. Let me hear Lauds sung at Bingen one more time.
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The letter is despatched, and we wait. We study, we pray, we harvest our spring vegetables, we tend to the sick, and we whisper our way through the Office. Guibert teaches my girls and writes his book; he does not speak to me of the interdict.
The weather warms. Blossoms appear on the trees, and one of our hens settles hopefully on a clutch of eggs. I am aware, through certain messages that pass between our convent and the foundation at Disibodenberg, that witnesses have been heard in the matter of Matthias’s absolution, and that certain influential clerics have argued our case, while others have continued to condemn our action.
At last an answer comes, carried to Rupertsberg by young Brother Johannes, a long-legged country boy. I read the document in the scriptorium, with Sisters Elisabeth and Clothilde hovering at the door. I must show my sisters an example. I must be strong and calm, even if this is bad news.
I break the seal; cast my eyes over the first line or two. My heart leaps. God be praised! I blink back sudden tears.
“The interdict has been lifted.” My voice shakes. But I will not weep, either before my sisters or alone in my cell. “Please let our sisters know that we will sing Vespers this evening. And send someone down to the village with the news. Thank Brother Johannes and offer him food and drink before he starts his long walk home.”
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Later, as the voices of my sisters rise in a hymn of praise, their echoes ringing back from every corner of our chapel, I ask myself whether I have won this dispute on the strength of a half-truth. A dream is not a vision. A vision is from God; a vision holds you in its grip and will not let go until a time of its own choosing. I know this. A dream might be from anywhere. Even, perhaps, from the devil himself. Yet that dream, surely, could not be the devil’s work. The music in it was all divinity, all spirit, ineffable, unknowable, holy and pure. Dear God, I pray, if I have sinned, forgive me as you forgave Matthias. If I have taken too much upon myself, if I have indulged in prideful action, I am sorry. Humility has always been my hardest lesson. But in the end we are all dust. I suppose, very soon, my earthly remains will be in the garden out there, providing good nourishment for a new crop of plants. And to become compost is a humble state indeed. Dear God, thank you for this music. For the voices of women and of angels. Spread your sheltering hand over my sisters. When I am gone, let them walk on with piety, courage and, above all, wisdom. Let each in her own way sing.
“Hallowed Ground” by Juliet Marillier