A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

what do we know about the life of jutta and hildegard 31
his (double) monasteries.83 In the houses of canons regular in Springiersbach,
Klosterrath, and Frankenthal, men and women (primarily women)
strove together for a life in accordance with the evangelical counsels.
While such forms of life were never undisputed, they soon encountered
active resistance. In 1139, the Second Lateran Council turned against
women who desired to be regarded by the whole world as nuns, but who
followed no acknowledged Rule. Thus, the council also took aim at forms
of life such as those aspired to by Jutta. In addition, the council forbade
“nuns” from performing choir prayer in a church with canons or monks,
which is not known to have taken place at Disibodenberg, although the
possibility cannot be excluded. It was also at this time that the Premonstratensians
and canons regular from Klosterrath and Springiersbach (as
well as the southern German reform Benedictines) began to remove the
female convents from their joint monasteries.84 Thus, the female convent
at Andernach originated in the departure of the sisters from Springiersbach;
their magistra Tenxwind, around 1150, sent Hildegard a series
of questions so harsh in their criticism that someone decades later at
Rupertsberg, in the course of revising the letter, twisted the statements
into their exact opposite meaning.85 For many years at Klosterrath, the
monks had great difffijiculty in removing the women. After the brothers had
fijinally placed them some 40 kilometers away in the Ahr valley, they soon
accepted eight of the nuns back, in order to provide for typical female
labor such as sewing, etc. The canons thought that they needed at least a
small convent to provide these services, which, to the regret of the annalists,
soon grew back into a large female community.86
83 Franz J. Felten, “Norbert von Xanten. Vom Wanderprediger zum Kirchenfürsten,” in
Norbert von Xanten. Adliger, Ordensstifter, Kirchenfürst, ed. Kaspar Elm (Köln, 1984), pp.
69–157.
84 Franz J. Felten, “Frauenklöster und -stifte im Rheinland im 12. Jahrhundert. Ein
Beitrag zur Geschichte der Frauen in der religiösen Bewegung des hohen Mittelalters,” in
Reformidee und Reformpolitik im spätsalisch-frühstaufijischen Reich, pp. 189–300.
85 Alfred Haverkamp, “Tenxwind von Andernach und Hildegard von Bingen. Zwei
Weltanschauungen in der Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts,” in Institutionen, Kultur und Gesellschaft
im Mittelalter: Festschrift für Josef Fleckenstein, eds. Lutz Fenske, Werner Rösener,
and Thomas Zotz (Sigmaringen, 1984), pp. 515–48; reprinted in Alfred Haverkamp, Verfassung,
Kultur, Lebensform. Beiträge zur italienischen, deutschen und jüdischen Geschichte im
europäischen Mittelalter: dem Autor zur Vollendung des 60. Lebensjahres, eds. Friedhelm
Burgard, Alfred Heit, and Michael Matheus (Mainz, 1997), pp. 321–60.
86 Annales Rodenses [Klosterrath], ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH SS 16 (Hannover,
1859), p. 714; cf. Felten, “Frauenklöster und -stifte im Rheinland,” pp. 243–45.