I’m so happy to host Mary Sharratt today. She
and I are both witchcraft authors; her novel The Witching Hill focused
on the Pendle (England) witches of 1612. Because of our witchy connection, we
presented together at the Historical Novels Society and have developed a
warm camaraderie. Besides being a well-spoken advocate for witches, Mary’s a
fantastic writer (I also loved her earlier novel The Vanishing Point,
set in Colonial America).
Her latest book Illuminations focuses
on perhaps the best-known anchoress of all time, Hildegard of Bingen.
Anchoress, you say? So…she was a sailor in charge of the anchor?
No, an anchoress was someone who chose to
remove herself from society for religious reasons and often was permanently
enclosed in a cell attached to a church. She bricked herself in to
meditate, pray, and offer counsel through a window to the outside world. Says
Wikipedia,
“In the Germanic lands from at least the tenth century it was
customary for the bishop to say the office of the dead as the anchorite entered
her cell, to signify the anchorite's death to the world and rebirth to a
spiritual life of solitary communion with God and the angels.”
An anchorite is a male anchoress (so Wikipedia messed up!
Surprise.)
Hildegard of Bingen (Germany) lived a rich life despite her
confined adulthood. Let’s learn more from Mary…
Who was Hildegard of
Bingen?
Born in the Rhineland in present-day Germany,
Hildegard (1098–1179) was a visionary abbess and polymath. She composed an
entire corpus of sacred music and wrote nine books on subjects as diverse as
theology, cosmology, botany, medicine, linguistics, and human sexuality, a
prodigious intellectual outpouring that was unprecedented for a 12th-century
woman. Her prophecies earned her the title Sybil of the Rhine. An outspoken
critic of political and ecclesiastical corruption, she courted controversy.
Late in her life, she and her nuns were the subject of an interdict (a
collective excommunication) that was lifted only a few months before her death.
Hildegard nearly died an outcast.
In October 2012, over eight centuries after her death,
the Vatican finally canonized her and elevated her to Doctor of the Church, a
rare and solemn title reserved for the most distinguished theologians.
Presently there are only 33 Doctors of the Church, and only three are women
(Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Ávila, and Thérèse of Lisieux).
What inspired you
to write a novel about this 12th-century powerfrau?
For 12 years, I lived in Germany where Hildegard has
long been enshrined as a cultural icon, admired by both secular and spiritual
people. In her homeland, Hildegard’s cult as a “popular” saint long predates
her official canonization.
I was particularly struck by the pathos of her story.
The youngest of 10 children, Hildegard was offered to the Church at the age of
eight. She reported having luminous visions since earliest childhood, so
perhaps her parents didn’t know what else to do with her.
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| Mary Sharratt |
According to Guibert of Gembloux’s Vita Sanctae Hildegardis, she was
bricked into an anchorage with her mentor, the 14-year-old Jutta von Sponheim,
and possibly one other young girl. Guibert describes the anchorage in the
bleakest terms, using words like “mausoleum” and “prison,” and writes how these
girls died to the world to be buried with Christ. As an adult, Hildegard
strongly condemned the practice of offering child oblates to monastic life, but
as a child she had absolutely no say in the matter. The anchorage was situated
in Disibodenberg, a community of monks. What must it have been like to be among
a tiny minority of young girls surrounded by adult men?
Disibodenberg Monastery is now in ruins and it’s
impossible to say precisely where the anchorage was, but the suggested location
is two suffocatingly narrow rooms built on to the back of the church.
Hildegard spent 30 years interred in her prison, her
release only coming with Jutta’s death. What amazed me was how she was able to
liberate herself and her sisters from such appalling conditions. At the age of
42, she underwent a dramatic transformation, from a life of silence and
submission to answering the divine call to speak and write about her visions
she had kept secret all those years.
In the 12th century, it was a radical thing
for a nun to set quill to paper and write about weighty theological matters.
Her abbot panicked and had her examined for heresy. Yet, miraculously, this
“poor weak figure of a woman,” as Hildegard called herself, triumphed against
all odds to become one of the greatest voices of her age.
What special challenges
did you face in writing about such a complex woman?
Hildegard’s life was so long and eventful, so filled
with drama and conflict, tragedy and ecstasy, that it proved mightily difficult
to squeeze the essence of her story into a manageable novel. My original draft
was 40,000 words longer than the current book. I also found it quite
intimidating to write about such a religious woman. In the end, I found I had
to let Hildegard breathe and reveal herself as human.
If Hildegard has
long been venerated as a “popular” saint in Germany, why did it take the
Vatican so long to canonize her? Why Hildegard and why now?
The first attempt to canonize Hildegard began in 1233,
but failed as over 50 years had passed since her death and most of the
witnesses and beneficiaries of her reported miracles were deceased. Her
theological writings were deemed too dense and difficult for subsequent
generations to understand and soon fell into obscurity, as did her music.
According to Barbara Newman, Hildegard was remembered mainly as an apocalyptic
prophet. But in the age of Enlightenment, prophets and mystics went out of
fashion. Hildegard was dismissed as a hysteric and even the authorship of her
own work was disputed. Pundits began to suggest her books were written by a man.
Newman states that Hildegard’s contemporary
rehabilitation and resurgence were due mainly to the tireless efforts of the
nuns at Saint Hildegard Abbey. In 1956, Marianna Schrader and Adelgundis Führkötter, OSB, published a
carefully-documented study that proved the authenticity of Hildegard’s
authorship. Their research provides the foundation of all subsequent Hildegard
scholarship.
In the 1980s, in the wake of a wider women’s
spirituality movement, Hildegard’s star rose as seekers from diverse faith backgrounds
embraced her as a foremother and role model. The artist Judy Chicago showcased
Hildegard at her iconic feminist Dinner
Party installation. Medievalists and theologians rediscovered Hildegard’s
writings. New recordings of her sacred music hit the popular charts. The
radical Dominican monk Matthew Fox adopted Hildegard as the figurehead of his
creation-centered spirituality. Fox’s book Illuminations
of Hildegard of Bingen remains one of the most accessible and popular books
on the 12th-century visionary. In 2009, German director Margarethe von Trotta
made Hildegard the subject of her luminous film, Vision. And all the while, the sisters at Saint Hildegard Abbey
were exerting their quiet pressure on Rome to get Hildegard the official
endorsement they believed she deserved.
Pope John Paul II, who had canonized more saints than
any previous pontiff, steadfastly ignored Hildegard’s burgeoning cult, possibly
because he was repelled by her status as a feminist icon. Ironically, it is his
successor, Benedict XVI, one of the most conservative popes in recent
history—who, as Cardinal Ratzinger, defrocked Matthew Fox—finally gave
Hildegard her due. Reportedly, Joseph Ratzinger, a German, had long admired
Hildegard.
What relevance does Hildegard have for us today?
I think that
Hildegard’s legacy remains hugely important for contemporary women. While
writing this book, I kept coming up against the injustice of how women, who are
often more devout than men, are condemned to stand at the margins of
established religion, even in the 21st century. Women priests and
bishops still cause controversy in the Episcopalian Church while Pope John Paul
II called a moratorium even on the discussion of women priests.
Modern women have
the choice to wash their hands of organized religion altogether. But Hildegard
didn’t even get to choose whether to enter monastic life—she was thrust into an
anchorage at the age of eight. The Church of her day could not have been more
patriarchal and repressive to women. Yet her visions moved her to create a
faith that was immanent and life-affirming, that can inspire us today.
The cornerstone of
Hildegard’s spirituality was Viriditas,
or greening power, her revelation of the animating lifeforce manifest in the
natural world that infuses all creation with moisture and vitality. To her, the
divine was manifest in every leaf and blade of grass. Just as a ray of sunlight
is the sun, Hildegard believed that a
flower or a stone was God, though not
the whole of God. Creation revealed the face of the invisible creator.
Hildegard’s re-visioning of religion celebrated women and nature and even
perceived God as feminine, as Mother. Her vision of the universe was an egg in
the womb of God.
Hildegard shows how
visionary women might transform the most male-dominated faith traditions from
within.
What’s next? Do you
have a new novel in progress?
I’m working on a new novel, The Dark Lady’s Masque, which explores the life of Aemilia Bassano
Lanier (1569–1645), reportedly the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets. The
highly-cultured daughter of an Italian court musician, she was also an
accomplished poet and the first English woman to publish a collection of poetry
under her own name.
Mary, thanks so much. I wish the best success for your novel and for the world to get to know Hildegard, who was so deeply extraordinary.
To view a book trailer for
Illuminations, click
here.
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