A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

what do we know about the life of jutta and hildegard 19
Jutta was “buried like one dead to the world.” The names that Guibert
uses for the cloister fijit well with this theme: ergastulum, carcer, reclusionis
sinum, even mausoleum. Like the rules, he writes about a (small) window
used for conversation with visitors during fijixed hours (a fundamental
point in the rules) and to supply life’s necessities. He also reports that a
wall of solid stones prevented any access to the cloister (non lignis
cementatis solide lapidibus omni aditu obturato).19 This is well beyond the
requirements of the rules, which for the most part only say that the door
should be locked—sometimes with two keys, one of which was stored in
the cloister—and fijixed with a seal.20
Lest we think that a particularly strict form of immurement was adopted
at Disibodenberg, we discover from Guibert himself that the cloister cannot
be imagined as strictly or hermetically enclosed. Through the call of
her holiness, Jutta spread her fervor not only to the pupils enclosed with
her, but also to many young men and women living in the surrounding
area. She even drew some “bodily toward her presence.”21 Noble men
and women streamed to her, offfering their daughters for a cloistered
life. In addition, they offfered (for their daughters’ sustenance) vineyards,
estates, and fijiefs. Jutta presented these offferings “to the abbot and senior
brothers,” and with their advice and permission she accepted the noble
daughters (as well as the gifts offfered with them) and led them into the
expanded “mausoleum,” to instruct them in regular discipline. As a result,
there grew out of the tomb (sepulchrum) a quasi monasterium, but in such
a way, Guibert asserts, that the seclusion of the tomb did not fade amid
the bustle of the cloister (monasterii frequentia).22
Guibert, accordingly, maintains to the end his particular vocabulary for
describing the cloister. At Jutta’s death, he has her conducted by a large
number of people (abbots, nobles, men, and women alike) from her “dungeon”
to her burial place in the brothers’ chapter hall.23 Guibert does not
say who had chosen the burial place—according to her Vita, Jutta had
desired a place where she could be trodden upon by the feet of passers-by.24
In the chapter hall, on the other hand, Jutta would be removed from all
19 Epistolae, I, 38, p. 373, ll. 225–30.
20 Grimlaicus, Regula Solitariorum, 15, PL 103:593–94; Doerr, Das Institut der Inclusen,
pp. 51–52.
21 Epistolae, I, 38, p. 374, ll. 256–57: “adolescentulas multas, non solum, ut premissum
est, inflammauit, sed quasdam etiam corporaliter ad presentiam eius attraxit.”
22 Ibid., p. 374, ll. 256–68.
23 Ibid., p. 374, ll. 269–78.
24 Vita Juttae, 8.19, p. 185.