A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

hildegard of bingen and the hirsau reform 69
would have been familiar with the practice of noble women having their
own community at Marcigny, some physical distance from Cluny. William
himself, however, like his disciple, Theoger of St Georgen (d. 1119), was particularly
active in encouraging women to pursue a religious life alongside
men.43 The chronicler of Petershausen devotes particular attention to the
holy lives of various nuns living alongside monks at the abbey. He reports
how a certain Regilinda once saw from her sickbed an older man leading
her through a garden of overwhelming sweetness and then showing her a
procession of brilliantly clothed saints drawing ever closer to eternal light.44
The reverence that the monks of Disibodenberg accorded Jutta and then
Hildegard parallels the enthusiasm of the chronicler of Petershausen for
holy nuns, perceived as privileged with insight into the secrets of heaven.
The chronicler also includes a long report of a vision written by Bernard,
a monk of Petershausen celebrated for his wisdom and erudition,
who had been sent to the abbey by William of Hirsau in 1086.45 The allegorical
style of Bernard’s vision anticipates that of Hildegard in a number
of ways, not least in that his description is accompanied by an illustration
in the manuscript of the chronicle.46 Bernard reports that in a dream he
saw himself standing with four others under the sky. He looked up and
saw a ball of glowing ashes coming from heaven, crossing the sky and then
falling to earth. A ladder was erected from the earth to heaven for people
to climb, with the result that they were incinerated by the fijire in heaven
in the same way as others who had risen from the dead. Some of these
ashes were white; others were black. He realized that these were the righteous
and the wicked mixed together, the glowing ashes being those souls
purifijied by fijire. This prompted him to climb the ladder and glimpse the
divine glory. The guardian of heaven allowed him to enter into a great palace,
where he saw a procession of the righteous approaching the throne
of the Lord. Unable to hide, Bernard and his companion were thrown two
loaves of bread and wine. Stricken with remorse for his own sinfulness
and terrorized by the thought of the empty penances he had performed
on earth, he could not understand how his life had been spared. He then
awoke to realize that this vision had been a dream. Bernard’s vision of the
Symbiose männlicher und weiblicher Religiosen im Mittelalter, eds. Kaspar Elm and Michel
Parisse, Berliner Historische Studien 18 (Berlin, 1992), pp. 115–33.
43 Vita Theogeri I.20, 25–27, ed. Philipp Jafffé, MGH SS 12:458, 459–61.
44 Monasterii Petrishusensis 5.19, MGH SS 20:673.
45 Ibid. 3.2, 18, MGH SS 20:649, 651–53.
46 The illustration is reproduced by Feger in his introduction, Die Chronik des Klosters
Petershausen, p. 14.