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Illuminations book1/7/2024 Whispering pleas for forgiveness to the deceased, I picked my way over the bare soil until I came to the last resting place of Maximus, the runaway monk whose plight had driven our desperate act. Tears caught in my eyes as Sister Cordula passed me the crook that marked my office of abbess. Our graveyard was a sanctuary as holy as the high altar of our church. My daughters’ faces were etched in both exhaustion and silent shock. Though the tombstones still stood, jutting like teeth from the rent soil, we had chiseled off every last inscription. We had tilled every inch of our churchyard. With somber eyes, we Sisters of Rupertsberg surveyed our handiwork. Following my lead, my daughters set down their tools. At seventy-nine years of age, I am no longer strong enough for such labors, yet force of necessity had moved me to toil for half a day, my every muscle shrieking. My blistered hands loosened their grip on the shovel, letting it fall into the churned up earth. Soon I would meet my nemesis face-to-face. Mother, what is this vision you show me? With my waking eyes, I saw it coming. Female prophets crowd the books of the Old Testament-Deborah and Sarah, Miriam and Abigail, Hannah and Esther.Īnd so, in my own age, when learned men, quoting Saint Peter, call woman the weaker vessel, even they have to concede that a woman can be a font of truth, filled with vision, her voice moving like a feather on the breath of God. But the seeress’s might is not just a relic of pagan times. In those heathen times, her people revered her as a goddess, for she foretold their victory against the Romans. She took no husband but lived in a tower. Once, centuries before my existence, there lived in these Rhineland forests a woman named Weleda, she who sees. THE MOST ANCIENT and enduring power of women is prophecy, my gift and my curse. From Charting the Divine Office, Lila Collamore, in The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages, Margot E. Hildegard von Bingen’s vision of the Feminine Divine, from Scivias, III, 4.15, translated by Mother Columba Hart, O.S.B., and Jane Bishop For she is terrible with the terror of the avenging lightning, and gentle with the goodness of the bright sun and both her terror and her gentleness are incomprehensible to humans. . . . But she is with everyone and in everyone, and so beautiful is her secret that no person can know the sweetness with which she sustains people, and spares them in inscrutable mercy. She is so bright and glorious that you cannot look at her face or her garments for the splendor with which she shines. Title.Ĭover image of woman © Clayton Bastiani / Trevillion Imagesīorder © Franco Ferrarese Ross / Bridgeman Art Library / Getty Images Illuminations : a novel of Hildegard von Bingen / Mary Sharratt.ġ. The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows: “Gripping…Like Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto, is primarily about relationships forged under pressure.”- Publishers Weekly “Masterful.”- Saint Paul Pioneer Pressįor information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016. ![]() “One could not anticipate this majesty and drama… Illuminations is riveting, following von Bingen through…to emerge as one of the significant voices of the 12th century…Unforgettable.” - January Magazine “Sharratt brings one of the most famous and enigmatic women of the Middle Ages to vibrant life in this tour de force, which will captivate the reader from the very first page.” -Sharon Kay Penman, New York Times–bestselling author of The Land Beyond the Sea In this brilliantly researched and insightful novel, Mary Sharratt offers a deeply moving portrait of a woman willing to risk everything for what she believed, a triumphant exploration of the life she might well have lived. But through the study of books and herbs, through music and the kinship of her sisters, Hildegard found her way from a life of submission to a calling that celebrated the divine glories all around us. Offered by her noble family to the Church at the age of eight, she lived for years in forced silence. ![]() Hildegard von Bingen-Benedictine abbess, healer, composer, saint-experienced mystic visions from a very young age. From the author of Ecstasty, a novel of a girl who triumphed against impossible odds to become the most extraordinary woman of the Middle Ages.
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