A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

24 franz j. felten
nor did he grant her a monastery of her own, although 12 years later he
became the cofounder of the monastery at Sponheim.45 Her mother, in
fact, may already have had the establishment of a monastery in mind.46
Guibert emphasizes how strictly the young women were enclosed and
says nothing about the form of their religious life. He does, however, mention
Jutta’s work outside the cloister and its efffects. The Vita Juttae stresses
her “monastic life,” which far exceeded Benedictine demands in asceticism
and prayer. The Vita vividly describes that Jutta mortifijied her body with a
hair shirt and iron chain, all the while showing a generous heart to those
sick in body or soul; that, in addition to the regular duties of the monastic
offfijice, she recited the entire Psalter daily, sometimes two or three times,
often standing or kneeling, barefoot even in the cold of winter—to the
point that she became very ill. In addition to this excessive prayer, she
undertook hard manual labor in the tradition of ancient monasticism,
so that she would not eat her bread idly.47 In these actions, Jutta stands
squarely in a tradition that dates back to the beginnings of monasticism
in the desert, a tradition that was reemphasized in her own time by both
monastic reformers and canons regular. The older tradition was embraced
against the waning Cluniac influence, not only with the aim of eliminating
idleness and granting rest from prayer (as in many rules for cloistered religious),
but also explicitly so that the religious would earn their own livelihood.
This becomes particularly clear in the life of Paulina of Paulinzella,
whose ascetic life as a hermit was very similar to Jutta’s,48 and with the
women of Montreuil, who, following the model of the Cistercians, cleared
and cultivated their land with their own hands.49
Jutta’s Vita dedicates much space to her conversation with those who
came to her for advice—although the author professes that it exceeds his
ability to describe how highly her counsel in spiritual and worldly mat-
45 Ibid., 522.
46 Ibid., 553 mentions that a church had been granted as a gift and made available for
such purposes.
47 Vita Juttae, 4.5.4–8, pp. 177–79.
48 Vita Paulinae auctore Sigebotonis, ed. Julius Reinhard Dieterich, MGH SS 30–2 (Hannover,
1934), pp. 909–38; esp. cc. 20–22, pp. 920–21.
49 Herman of Tournai, De miraculis S. Maria Laudunesis, ed. Roger Wilmans, MGH SS
12 (Hannover, 1856), pp. 658–59. On the importance of manual labor, see Dietrich Kurze,
“Die Bedeutung der Arbeit im zisterziensischen Denken,” in Die Zisterzienser, Ordensleben
zwischen Ideal und Wirklichkeit. Eine Ausstellung des Landschaftverbandes Rheinland-Pfalz,
3. Juli bis 28. September 1980, eds. Kaspar Elm, Peter Joerissen, and Hermann Josef Roth
(Bonn, 1980), pp. 179–202; Giles Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge,
Mass., 1996).