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Summary
Summary
A triumphant portrait of a resilient and courageous woman and the life she might have lived.
Summary
Skillfully interweaving historical fact with psychological insight and vivid imagination, Sharratt's redemptive novel, Illuminations , brings to life one of the most extraordinary women of the Middle Ages: Hildegard von Bingen, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath.
Offered to the Church at the age of eight, Hildegard was entombed in a small room where she was expected to live out her days in silent submission as the handmaiden of a renowned but disturbed young nun, Jutta von Sponheim. Instead, Hildegard rejected Jutta's masochistic piety and found comfort and grace in studying books, growing herbs, and rejoicing in her own secret visions of the divine. When Jutta died some thirty years later, Hildegard broke out of her prison with the heavenly calling to speak and write about her visions and to liberate her sisters and herself from the soul-destroying anchorage. Riveting and utterly unforgettable, Illuminations is a deeply moving portrayal of a woman willing to risk everything for what she believed.
Author Notes
Mary Sharratt is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Summit Avenue , The Real Minerva , The Vanishing Point , and Daughters of the Witching Hill .
Tavia Gilbert, a multiple Audie Award nominee and AudioFile Earphones and Parent's Choice Award-winning producer, narrator, and writer, has appeared on stage and in film. She has narrated over two hundred multicast and solo voice audiobooks.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Sharratt (Daughters of the Witching Hill) offers up an imaginative retelling of the fascinating life of the 12th-century nun Hildegard von Bingen. As the 10th child, Hildegard is given to the church as a tithe at age eight, whereupon she becomes a handmaiden to the devout and troubled Jutta von Sponheim. Entombed in an anchorage in what is now Germany as brides of Christ under Benedictine rule, Hildegard and Jutta endure their monastic imprisonment for 30 years, during which time Hildegard experiences divine visions. When her anchoress finally dies, Hildegard is granted "free passage in the abbey," but her newfound liberty is accompanied by intensified visions and a desire to make those revelations manifest, an impulse roundly quelled by zealous monks. Nevertheless, years spent captive with Jutta strengthened Hildegard's resolve, and she dutifully perseveres, composing 78 songs; penning a book and hundreds of letters to emperors, popes, and royalty; and going on to found two monasteries. Though confined primarily to the abbey and peopled by a small cast, Sharratt's gripping story, like Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, is primarily about relationships forged under pressure. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Locked in a monastic cell at age eight with a devout but disturbed teenager who requested her as a companion, Hildegard von Bingen had an inauspicious start in life. This real-life, twelfth-century nun spent decades as an anchorite, sealed in a small cell attached to a German monastery, her only comfort the visions of gardens and golden orbs encircling a great mother figure and the music she began to compose. In this affecting historical novel, Sharratt imagines the inner life of Hildegard, first as an angry child, then as a young woman nurturing the other girls forced into this restricted life, and finally as a mature woman leading her companions out of the anchorage, establishing the first monastic institution for women in Germany, and advocating an idea of religious devotion based on love rather than suffering. Psychological insight, passages of moving spirituality, and abundant historical detail from straw bedding and hairshirts to turtle soup and wooden dolls make this a memorable addition to the genre of medieval historical fiction.--Weber, Lynn Copyright 2010 Booklist
Kirkus Review
A fictionalized biography of medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen. Its publication will coincide with her appointment as a Doctor of the Church by Pope Benedict. Eight-year-old Hildegard, a knight's daughter, accompanies teenage Jutta, a countess' daughter, as both are imprisoned in an anchorage, a tiny enclosure adjoining a Benedictine monastery chapel in the German hamlet of Disibodenberg. The girls are consecrated as "oblates," an extreme form of cloistered nun. Their parents have ulterior motives for consigning each child to this sacred interment: Hildegard's visions embarrass her family, and Jutta, a victim of incest, is unmarriageable. For the next 30 years, Hildegard, with the help of a monk named Volmar, manages to gain an education in music, languages and medicinal arts while Jutta starves herself and mortifies her flesh until she dies. Since the anchorage must now be unbricked for Jutta's funeral, Hildegarde convinces the Abbot of Disibodenburg to allow her and two other oblates to remain free. Soon, Richardis is brought by her noble mother to serve Hildegard. Richardis is mute, but Hildegard correctly divines that her embrace of religious life is voluntary. When she speaks, it is to defend Hildegard's visions and writings, which Richardis has helped to illustrate on parchment. This miracle affords Hildegard some credibility at Disibodenburg. Then, word comes that Pope Eugenius wants to scrutinize her first manuscript, Scivias. With the help of Volmar and her beloved brother, Rorich, who serves the Archbishop of Mainz, she is cleared of heresy and is even dubbed "God's Sybil" by the Pope. Now, Hildegard is free to fulfill her destiny, which she first fully realized at the age of 42, as a writer, healer, composer and abbess. But further hurdles await. Sharratt brings the elusive Hildegard to vivid life, underscoring her ability to evade or transcend Church censure while espousing a proto-feminist agenda. The ideal companion to the elevation of Hildegard by the pontiff who rebuked American nuns for their outspokenness, an irony the saint herself might have relished.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
The extraordinary 12th-century nun's sketchy biography forms the basis of this feminist tale, featuring a strong, independent woman whose parents sent her away at age eight to be the companion to a 16-year-old religious fanatic, Jutta Von Spondheim. For 30 years, Hildegard lived in a walled-up area of the Disibodenberg monastery, only to emerge when Jutta died. Once free, Hildegard, having experienced religious visions since childhood, established and led her own convent, composing music and writing theological texts. Sharrott (Daughters of the Witching Hill; The Real Minerva) successfully articulates her subject's religious nature while stressing her human qualities. Tavia Gilbert's thoughtful reading captures Hildegard's voice as she ages from eight to over 80. verdict This highly religious audiobook will appeal largely to listeners who wish to learn more about this newly canonized saint as well as those interested in the medieval church. ["Interest in Hildegard will likely increase this year following her long-overdue canonization and receipt of the title "Doctor of the Church...." Sharratt's well-timed and well-written portrait, both admiring and humanizing, should please readers looking for an accessible way to learn more about the life of this fascinating medieval woman," read the review of the Houghton Harcourt hc, LJ 8/12.-Ed.] [See also the review of the DVD Hildegard of Bingen and the Living Light, p. 54.]-Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
She is so bright and glorious that you cannot look at her face or her garments for the splendor with which she shines. For she is terrible with the terror of the avenging lightning, and gentle with the goodness of the bright sun; and both her terror and her gentleness are incomprehensible to humans. . . . But she is with everyone and in everyone, and so beautiful is her secret that no person can know the sweetness with which she sustains people, and spares them in inscrutable mercy. --Hildegard von Bingen's vision of the Feminine Divine, from Scivias, III, 4.15, translated by Mother Columba Hart, O.S.B., and Jane Bishop Prologue: Apostate Rupertsberg, 1177 THE MOST ANCIENT and enduring power of women is prophecy, my gift and my curse. Once, centuries before my existence, there lived in these Rhineland forests a woman named Weleda, she who sees. She took no husband but lived in a tower. In those heathen times, her people revered her as a goddess, for she foretold their victory against the Romans. But the seeress's might is not just a relic of pagan times. Female prophets crowd the books of the Old Testament--Deborah and Sarah, Miriam and Abigail, Hannah and Esther. And so, in my own age, when learned men, quoting Saint Peter, call woman the weaker vessel, even they have to concede that a woman can be a font of truth, filled with vision, her voice moving like a feather on the breath of God. Mother, what is this vision you show me? With my waking eyes, I saw it coming. The storm approaching our abbey. Soon I would meet my nemesis face-to-face. My blistered hands loosened their grip on the shovel, letting it fall into the churned up earth. At seventy-nine years of age, I am no longer strong enough for such labors, yet force of necessity had moved me to toil for half a day, my every muscle shrieking. Following my lead, my daughters set down their tools. With somber eyes, we Sisters of Rupertsberg surveyed our handiwork. We had tilled every inch of our churchyard. Though the tombstones still stood, jutting like teeth from the rent soil, we had chiseled off every last inscription. My daughters' faces were etched in both exhaustion and silent shock. Our graveyard was a sanctuary as holy as the high altar of our church. Now it resembled a wasteland. Tears caught in my eyes as Sister Cordula passed me the crook that marked my office of abbess. Whispering pleas for forgiveness to the deceased, I picked my way over the bare soil until I came to the last resting place of Maximus, the runaway monk whose plight had driven our desperate act. The boy fled to us for asylum after his brothers committed unspeakable sins against him. Despite our every effort to heal his broken body and soul, the young man died in our hospice, and so we gave him a Christian burial. But the prelates of the Archbishop of Mainz, the very men who had ignored the cruelty unfolding in the boy's monastery, had declared Maximus an apostate. Tomorrow or the following day, the prelates would come to wrest the dead boy from his grave and dump him in unhallowed ground as if he were a dead mongrel. So we razed our burial ground, making it impossible for any outsider to locate his grave. Had the prelates ever imagined that mere nuns would take such measures to foil them, the men we were bound to obey? Raising my abbess's crook, I spoke the words of blessing. "In the name of the Living Light, may this holy resting place be protected. May it remain invisible to all who would desecrate it." My heart throbbed like a wound when I remembered the boy who died in my arms, the one I had sworn before God to protect. He had committed no crime, had only been a handsome youth in a nest of vipers. Maximus had only an aged abbess and her nuns to stand between him and the full might of the Church fathers. The November wind crested our walls, tossing up grave dust that stung our eyes. My daughters flinched, ashen-faced in the dread we shared. What would happen to us now that we had committed such an outrageous act of sedition? The prelates' retribution would be merciless. Foreboding flared again, the fate awaiting us as terrifying as the devil's giant black claw rearing from the hell mouth. Somehow I must summon the warrior strength to battle this evil. Seize the sword to vanquish the dragon. Maximus's ordeal proved only too well what damage these men could wreak. In a true vision, Ecclesia, the Mother Church, had appeared to me as a ravished woman, her thighs bruised and bloody, for her own clergy had defiled her. The prelates preached chastity while allowing young men to be abused. In defending the boy, my daughters and I risked sharing his fate--being cast out and condemned. The prelates would crush my dissent at all costs. Everything I had worked for in my long life might be lost in one blow, leaving me and my daughters pariahs and excommunicants. How could I protect my community now that I was so old, a relic from another time, my once-powerful allies dead? To think that seven years ago I had preached upon the steps of Cologne Cathedral and castigated those same men for their fornication and hypocrisy, their simony and greed. O you priests. You have neglected your duties. Let us drive these adulterers and thieves from the Church, for they fester with every iniquity. In those days I spoke with a mighty voice, believing I had nothing to lose, that the prelates would not trouble themselves over one old nun. The men I'd railed against gathered like carrion crows to wreak their revenge and put me in my place once and for all. It was not my own fate that worried me, for I have endured much in my life. This year or the next, I would join the departed in the cold sod and await judgment like any other soul. But what would become of my daughters? How could I die and leave them to this turmoil--what if this very abbey was dissolved, these women left homeless? A stabbing pain filled me to see them so lost, their faces stark with fear. Our world was about to turn upside down. How could I save these women who had placed their trust in me? "Daughters, our work here is done," I said, as tenderly as I could, giving them leave to depart and seek solace in their duties in the infirmary and scriptorium, the library and workroom. Leaving the graveyard to its desolation, I pressed forward to the rampart wall overlooking the Rhine, the blue-green thread connecting everything in my universe. Nestled in the vineyards downriver and just out of view lay Eibingen, our daughter house. Our sisters there, too, would face the coming storm. Then, as I gazed at the river below, an icy hand gripped my innards. A barge approached our landing. The prelates had wasted no time. I was striding down the corridor when Ancilla, a postulant lay sister, came charging toward me, her skirts flapping. "Mother Abbess! We have a visitor." The girl's face was alight with an excitement that seemed at odds with our predicament. She was a newcomer to our house and, as such, I'd spared her the grim work of digging up the graveyard. "A foreigner! He doesn't speak a word of German." My heart drummed in panic. Had the prelates sent someone from Rome? Oblivious to my trepidation, Ancilla seemed as thrilled as though the Empress of Byzantium had come to call. "The cellarer will bring up the very best wines, won't she, Mother? And there will be cakes!" The girl was so giddy that I had to smile at her innocence even as my stomach folded in fear. I told her I would receive our guest in my study. After washing and changing, I girded myself to confront the messenger who would deliver our doom. But when I entered my study, I saw no papal envoy, only a young Benedictine monk who sprang from his chair before diving to his knees to kiss my hand. "Exalted abbess!" he exclaimed in Latin, speaking in the soft accent of those who hail from the Frankish lands. "The holy Hildegard." Our visitor appeared no older than twenty, his face glowing as pink as sunrise. "What a splendid honor," he said, "to finally meet you in the flesh." "Brother," I said, at a loss. "I don't know your name." "Did you not receive my letter?" His soft white hands fluttered like doves. "I am Guibert of Gembloux Abbey in the Ardennes. I have come to write your Vita, most reverend lady." Lowering myself into my chair, I nearly laughed in relief. So I still had allies and well-wishers after all, though this young man could hardly shield us from the prelates of Mainz. "My brother in Christ, you flatter me too much," I told him. "Hagiographies are for saints. I'm only a woman." He shook his head. "Your visions have made you the most far-famed woman in the Holy Roman Empire." Guibert's face shone in a blissful naïveté that matched that of young Ancilla, who attended us, pouring him warm honeyed wine spiced with cloves and white pepper, but he ignored the fragrant cup. His flashing dark eyes were riveted on mine. "Tell me, Mother Hildegard, does God speak to you in Latin or in German? And is it true that you bade your nuns to wear tiaras?" Before I could even attempt an answer, he blustered on. "Your writings are most extraordinary! I have never read their like! Did I correctly understand that God appears to you as a woman?" Brother Guibert was not the first to ask this question. I told the young monk what I'd told the others before him. "In the Scriptures, God appears as Father, and yet the Holy Spirit chose to reveal God's face to me as Mother." I never dreamt of calling myself holy, never presumed. Yet God, whom I called Mother, chose to grace even one as flawed as I am with the ecstasy of the Holy Spirit moving through me. And so I became the Mother's mouthpiece, a feather on her breath. How was I to describe such a mystery to Guibert? I never sought the visions, and yet they came. All I wanted was to know the ways of wisdom and grace, and walk them as best I could. But had I succeeded? My many sins and failings weighed on me. My superiors had only tolerated me for as long as they had because of the prophecies. I was torn. Honestly, I should warn Guibert away, send him back to Gembloux. The good man was wasting his time here. What use was there in writing the Vita of a woman soon to be condemned? Then something niggled at the back of my head. What if the key to saving my daughters from the coming tempest lay in my past, in examining my life from its genesis? Past and future were connected in an eternal ring, like the circle of holy flame I'd seen in my visions, that ring of fire enclosing all creation. If I allowed myself to go back in time, to become that graceless girl again, perhaps I might find a way to preserve us. Excerpted from Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard Von Bingen by Mary Sharratt All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.