Free Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard Von Bingen by Mary Sharratt Page A

the forest. Part of me walked beneath those rustling woodland boughs and breathed that pure air, my soul blessed by so many living things.
     
    The first summer of our captivity passed and then the second. Jutta seemed happy, or at least as content as a melancholy girl could hope to be. Her name, uttered with reverence, was on every monk’s lips. The glory of Disibodenberg, holy Jutta sat at her screen, otherworldly in her loveliness, and chanted her benedictions to the stream of pilgrims who eased the monotony of our days. Her reputation as a beauty remained undiminished, her new life as a recluse only adding to her mystique.
    The magnitude of her sacrifice—interring herself alive to serve God and others through her prayers—seemed to prove that she wielded extraordinary powers and could work wonders on behalf of many, that her blessing and counsel were more potent than all the prayers and Masses offered by the monks. While men who became anchorites were usually priests or monks of many years’ standing before they made this final, irrevocable act of renunciation, female anchorites came straight from the world, pitching themselves into holy seclusion without first having had to climb the rungs of hierarchy. And so the pilgrims held us in awe as beings set apart.
    Rumors spread that Jutta lived on water and air. So pure and undefiled, she was free of the shame of monthly bleeding. Pilgrims from as far away as Trier walked barefoot over hills and through forests, fording rivers and swamps to seek an audience with their holy woman. Wealthy supplicants heaped endowments on Disibodenberg to win my magistra’s good favor while the poor begged for her intercession and mercy, as though a few murmured words from her could protect them from famine and plague. Kneeling outside our screen, matrons and maidens poured out their hearts’ sorrows to Jutta as though she could cure their every malady and turn their woe to weal.
    But saintliness was no easy yoke to bear. The more Jutta’s holy reputation flourished, the harder she struggled to embody it. It hardly mattered if it was Ash Wednesday or Easter Sunday—she ignored the feasts to embrace her fasts until her skin grew as translucent as the inside of a snail’s shell. Hunger lent her such a fragile, delicate grace, rarer and more refined than the ruddy glow of good health. But it left her chilled even on the most sweltering days of high summer. Clutching a blanket over her sackcloth, the holy maiden awaited her next lot of pilgrims.
     
    Once a week Prior Cuno sought an audience with Jutta. He whispered to her in a voice so low and strangled that, as hard as I strained my ears, I couldn’t catch a word. Once, bringing Jutta a cup of water, I contrived to glimpse the prior’s face through the screen. As he gazed at my magistra, he seemed entranced—more like a lover than a monk, reminding me of the way the moon-faced village boys used to gawp at my beautiful sisters.
    As I grew older, I would understand that before Jutta’s arrival, the monks of Disibodenberg had gone years on end without laying eyes on a living woman, let alone one so lovely. Even at that age, I knew without anyone telling me that Jutta was the most exquisite creature ever to grace this remote abbey: a lady of the high aristocracy who had renounced her fortune and every comfort to join the Benedictines, her crystalline voice soaring with the brothers in song. Even imprisoned in our anchorage, Jutta bloomed like a rare damask rose, her exotic fragrance inflaming every soul inside these monastery walls.
    Cuno treated her with reverence, as though convinced that Jutta was indeed a living saint. My magistra’s life, I knew, followed the pattern laid out in the hagiographies. None of the celebrated virgin martyrs were born poor or ugly, but were, without exception, noble maidens of legendary beauty who had forsaken their wealth and privilege to follow God. As far as I could gather from reading the stories, no