Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard Von Bingen (26 page)

Although the good man tried his best to put me at my ease, I was tongue-tied as I took my seat. It being Wednesday night, meat was forbidden, but such an array of fish was laid out that Richardis exclaimed she hadn’t seen its like since leaving her home near the North Sea. Plaice, there was, and baked cod, roach and bream, pike and turbot, sole and salmon from the Atlantic, scallops served in their shells, and eel, as tender as spring chicken, cooked in a green sauce. There were cheeses and many fine breads with sweet butter. The richest wine filled our goblets. Heinrich himself ate and drank sparingly, but urged us to sample each dish, as though this fabulous hospitality was for our sole benefit because he preferred simpler fare. Yet I could hardly eat a morsel. Rorich was right—my four decades in Disibodenberg had rendered me incapable of functioning outside its prison. I was as clueless as a peasant would be about how to conduct myself at the archbishop’s feast. Richardis and Rorich came to my rescue, conversing with the canons and prelates, the many glittering members of Heinrich’s household.

Blessedly, the archbishop seemed to mistake my discomfiture for true humility—a virtue that he embodied to his core.

“Many think me too young for the honor of this post,” he confessed. “Indeed, I was as surprised as anyone when they elected me. Would you pray for me, Hildegard, that I might be worthy to carry on Saint Boniface’s legacy?” he asked, speaking of the English-born apostle to Germany who had been the first archbishop of Mainz.

“You have all my prayers, your eminence.” I summoned the courage to lift my eyes to his beautiful face.

“What I have read of your work impressed me greatly.”

Under the warmth of his praise, I blushed like a novice.

“My sister also composes the most sublime music for the Holy Office,” Rorich said, speaking to cover my silence.

“How I would love to hear it during your visit,” Heinrich told me, his smile like the sun in June.

“Your eminence,” Richardis said, “if it would please you, my magistra and I shall sing for you this very evening.”

I shot her such a look. How could I be expected to sing for this hall packed with dignitaries when I could barely string together a coherent sentence? But it was too late to refuse now that Richardis had spoken. My face must have been as white as death for she found my hand under the table and squeezed until at last I lifted my eyes from the untouched food on my trencher and told the archbishop that nothing would give me greater pleasure than singing for him.

A servant brought us a psaltery, and then Richardis and I took our place before the assembly of nearly fifty men.

Her eyes locked with mine, Richardis plucked the strings. It was she, my dearest friend and soul’s companion, who chose the song, my canticle
O viridissima virga.
The greenest branch. Composed while I was still captive in the anchorage, this song embodied my deepest longing for freedom and union with the natural world. This was the song that Guda, Adelheid, and I had sung for Jutta’s funeral in our desperate bid for liberty, the three of us daring to appear unveiled to arrest the attention of Heinrich’s predecessor, the old Archbishop Adalbert. And this was the song I had sung when Richardis and I had met for the first time, when she was still a mute young girl. I remembered that look of astonishment she had given me, as though I were some miracle worker the way I had transformed myself and her cousins from drab anchorites into dazzling, silk-clad brides of Christ.

And so I began to sing in a voice far stronger than the one I used for speaking. In truth, I was not as gifted in song as Guda, or our departed Jutta, or Richardis herself, but my voice was the instrument God had given to me and now I raised it heavenward, closing my eyes as I surrendered to the flow of melody and words, Richardis joining me in harmony. The archbishop and his retinue faded away as I stood within that sphere of pulsing light.

My vision blazed before me, so beautiful I could taste it. My sisters and I, consecrated virgins, sailed down the Rhine in a mighty ship, as merry and free as the maidens of holy Ursula. Silks we wore and our long sweeping hair was unveiled and crowned in gold and jewels. No shackles or walls contained us. Rejoicing, we journeyed toward our own blessed paradise, an island of women. The Living Light flashed like the sun on the Rhine.

When our song ended, I felt faint. Taking Richardis’s hand, I bowed deeply to the archbishop. Did these men cheer us or was this a dream? Would I awaken in Disibodenberg to face Egon as he moaned about the next lot of pilgrims emptying the larders?

The archbishop spoke, his every word riveting my gaze to his. “Hildegard, beloved in Christ, your brother did not exaggerate your gifts.”

I saw that my song had moved the man to tears.

“In return for your heavenly music, it would give me great joy to bestow a gift on you,” this young man said, Heinrich, Archbishop of Mainz.

Richardis’s words came back to me:
Don’t look so petrified. After all, he’s only a man.
Heinrich was so utterly different from the archbishop before him, and the next archbishop might be entirely dissimilar from Heinrich. What a difference one man could make. I wondered if I, just one woman, might make a difference, too.

What did Heinrich think I would ask of him? Doubtless, he would have granted me one of the precious illuminated Gospels from his library or some holy relic to bring back to Disibodenberg as a tribute for my abbot and brother monks. Perhaps it would have been most appropriate to demur and say that the archbishop’s prayers and blessing for
Scivias
would be gift enough for one as humble as I.

Instead, something inside me—was it God or my own vanity? —compelled me to speak up in a mighty voice, shocking everyone in that hall.

“Your eminence,” I said, “though I am but a weak and ignorant woman, God has graced me with revelations of such holiness and commanded me to speak and write of these visions that I might be of use in the world. But how can my sister nuns and I be of any use if we are banished to the wilderness?

“In the name of the Living Light, I beg you to grant me the freehold of Rupertsberg on the Rhine, so that I might build a new abbey for my sisters and the glory of God.”

Heinrich’s handsome face froze. My brother looked as though he wanted to dive beneath the banquet table and bury himself in the rushes. The other men looked from one to the other, as though they had never fathomed such audacity coming from a backwater nun. I was afraid to even look at Richardis for fear that even she thought I had lost my mind.

Yet what purpose could my visions serve if I was to live out my days under Cuno’s thumb? In God’s name, we had to leave Disibodenberg and found our own community. My dream of my sisters sailing forth like Ursula’s virgins shimmered. A cold cord snared me when I remembered how Ursula’s story had ended. Head drooping, I was prepared to skulk away in shame when the archbishop came to take my hands.

“Sister Hildegard, what you ask is no small thing. You must speak with your abbot to arrange the particulars. But I gladly grant you the freehold of Rupertsberg so that you might build your own abbey, dedicated to Saint Rupert, the holy pilgrim whose hermitage now lies neglected.”

Richardis, being young, could not resist crying out in delight. She smiled at me as though I had returned from Jerusalem bearing wood from the True Cross.

“An abbey of our own making!” I murmured to Richardis as we lay in the guest bed with the curtains drawn to enclose our whispers.

This room, intended to accommodate visiting noblewomen who would have shared the broad bed with their daughters or maids, was like another world. What luxury it was to lie nestled on this feather mattress instead of our hard, narrow pallets.

“Imagine!” I said. “We can design the church. Every pillar. Oh, it will be paradise on earth.”

Already I could picture our new home on that bend where the Nahe joined the Rhine, in the center of trade and commerce, of vineyards, towns, and great estates. No longer would we be hidden away like lepers.

“Heinrich has given us the land,” Richardis said, “but how will we pay for the building of the abbey?”

“Our dowries, of course.”

My sisters were gifted with trunks of silk and jewels, gold and silver. Why should that wealth not pave our way to liberty?

Richardis laughed nervously, as though I had told a filthy joke. “You think Cuno will let us leave with our dowries?”

“Why should Cuno have for his own selfish profit what is ours?”

Our abbot himself complained that there were fewer and fewer novice monks. While our nunnery flourished, his monastery declined. So he would use us, the nuns he loved to belittle, as his golden nest egg.
No longer.
I had the archbishop on my side.

“I will write to my mother and ask for her help,” Richardis said as she nestled in the pillows. “Oh, I wish the other sisters could have seen you tonight. Especially Guda! Think of the look on her face when you made your request to the archbishop!”

I could only imagine what Guda would say when I announced we were leaving Disibodenberg to build a new abbey. Though she didn’t love the cramped confines of our nunnery, she also feared change the way others dreaded the plague.

“Did you plan this from the beginning?” Richardis asked. “First you are so shy and meek, then you knock the man off guard and he’s too shocked to refuse you.”

Though her voice was full of sleepy affection, she made me sound so calculated. My pulse beat fast as I asked myself if I should swallow my ambition, but then the vision caught hold of me again.

The following morning, I sat with the archbishop in his library and discussed
Scivias
with him, along with Bernard of Clairvaux’s writings concerning the Holy Mother. All awkwardness between Heinrich and me melted away. I could not disguise my regard for the man as I basked in the sunlight of his benevolence. Rorich looked on, his face pink with relief at how well the visit had gone despite my outrageous presumption the evening before.

When my brother escorted Richardis and me back to the barge, he seemed to walk on air. “Never forget how fortunate you are, sister! It’s a rare nun who receives such patronage. Heinrich is loyal and honest. He’ll look after you.”

My heart overflowed as we sailed past Rupertsberg once more.

“This is ours!”

Taking Richardis’s hands, I led her in a dance around the swaying barge. I felt young again, energy tingling in my veins, as though I were that child racing through the forest with my brother. Except now I was a woman grown and, instead of being a mere passenger on life’s chariot, I had taken hold of the reins and was driving it ever forward, blazing my own path.

“It will be magnificent! We shall build an abbey big enough to house fifty nuns! Families of the nobility will rejoice to send their daughters when they see how beautiful our house is.”

“You grow ever bolder,” Richardis said.

I shot her a glance, bracing myself for her disapproval, then relaxed to see the admiration in her eyes.

What a life we would lead when my dream was made real! My soul rose on crane’s wings to the very heights. Was this how men felt when they seized their power and caused great changes to come about? I felt as though I were a knight, fully armed and astride a galloping destrier.
Nothing can stop me now.

“The ingratitude!” Cuno’s rage crackled like lightning. “We have looked after you since you were a child. Now you wish to leave, taking with you the fame and fortune you have gained under
our
patronage. And you spoke not a word to me first but went over my head to the archbishop.”

I had expected resistance, expected him to lay me low and come up with a thousand reasons why I was too weak and unworthy to lead my daughters to their new home and to live without what he called his guidance and protection. But I’d no idea to what depths he would stoop.

Trembling in his fury, he raised his hand, which made me flinch, for I was convinced he would strike me. Instead, he gestured to every monk, nun, and novice assembled in the chapter house, inviting them to join him in dressing me down. His mob of monks glared at me as though I were a sow with three heads.

“Why would this foolish woman want to leave our house where she has lacked nothing to set up camp in a muddy field?”

“My lord abbot,” I managed. “God has shown me in a vision that I
must
build a new community at Rupertsberg.”

“God, or your own vainglory?” Breaking the Rule, my abbot roared in laughter, as though determined to grind me to dust beneath his feet. “Do not deceive yourself that this is God’s will.”

“She is deceived by the devil,” Egon proclaimed. “As we suspected from the beginning.”

“How can you say that when the pope himself declared Sister Hildegard a prophet?” Volmar demanded. Behind his anger, I sensed his terror of what Cuno would do to punish me.

“The Holy Father has granted her permission to write of her visions,” Cuno said, his voice curt and dismissive, “not to abandon all obedience and humility. He certainly hasn’t given her leave to remove her nuns and their dowries to some ruined hermitage.”

“What woman has ever founded a monastery?” Egon seemed eager to ape Cuno’s contempt of me. “It’s unheard of.”

“The hermitage of Rupertsberg itself was built by the holy Bertha of Bingen,” Richardis said, looking shaken but defiant. “To honor her son, the sainted Rupert. And I have read that in England in the age of Saint Aidan, Hilda of Whitby founded a double monastery where she was abbess over both monks and nuns.”

I threw her such a look of gratitude before I faced Cuno once more. “My lord abbot, Heinrich, Archbishop of Mainz, has already given me permission and the freehold of Rupertsberg.”

How dare Cuno stand in the way of what the archbishop had ordained? But Heinrich was far away and Cuno looked angry enough to spit.

“You double-crossed the archbishop. Like Eve, you hoodwinked him into bending to your will.”

“Like Eve, she is beguiled by the devil,” said Egon, who appeared to relish mentioning the False One whenever he could.