A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

hildegard of bingen and the hirsau reform 65
by Volmar) soon after her death in 1136, reports that the young Jutta fijirst
chose to reject marriage in 1105/1106, when she was just 13 years old. She
apparently asked permission from Ruthard to adopt the habit of a nun,
and was then placed with Hildegard, six years her junior, under the care
of Uda, a widow of Göllheim. Jutta’s early dreams of going on pilgrimage
were forestalled by her brother, Meinhard, who directed her to become a
recluse at Disibodenberg. Jutta, Hildegard, and two other women were all
formally enclosed at that abbey, then still under construction, on the feast
of All Saints (November 1) 1112. While this solemn ceremony is reported
both in the Chronicle of the abbey and in the Vita Juttae, Hildegard herself
never mentions it.30 She reports only that between her 8th and 15th years
(i.e. 1105–1112) she spoke frequently to her nurse about her visions, but
then she became timid and did not dare speak about them.31 Hildegard’s
oblation was a separate event from her formal enclosure as a recluse,
when she was offfijicially dedicated to a life of prayer and contemplation.
Hildegard may thus have moved to Disibodenberg only in 1112, when she
was just 14 years of age, following the decision of Jutta, then 20 years old.
Jutta’s biographer attached great importance to the ceremony of rejecting
the world and the ascetic practice to which she committed herself. Yet
Hildegard never defijined herself as a recluse. Her silence about the fijirst 30
years of her life at Disibodenberg suggests that she was not fully comfortable
with the spiritual conventions to which she had to commit herself
in the fijirst 30 years of her life in the abbey. Jutta’s biographer reports
that she engaged in ascetic practices that involved intense mortifijication
of the flesh, leading ultimately to her premature death in 1136 at the age
of 44. While Hildegard’s early life was spent in Jutta’s shadow, she never
embraced this zeal for personal asceticism. Given her known concern for
her own health, it seems most likely that she devoted her early life at Disibodenberg
to building up her knowledge of the therapeutic properties of
plants and stones, learning that she would distill in her Cause et cure and
Physica after she had moved to Rupertsberg c.1148. Only after Jutta’s death
in 1136 would events conspire to lead Hildegard to commit her visions to
writing. As she indicates at the outset of Scivias, she only evolved from a
recluse to a visionary through the support of a certain monk (Volmar, who
had been entrusted to teach Hildegard and the other women who had
Hildegard was offfered up when she was at the age of eight (i.e. 1106), rather than in her
eighth year, 1105. This confusion is widely repeated.
30 Annales Sancti Disibodi, MGH SS 17:25; Silvas, Jutta and Hildegard, p. 23.
31 See above, footnote 2.