How did Hildegard's view of pilgrimages evolve from Jutta's intended journey to the Holy Land to her own extensive travels and public pronouncements?
Have I already told you that Jutta never intended to enter a monastery at first!? For after her mother had died, she had decided instead to leave her country and her father’s house and, for the sake of the Lord, go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. As you all know, there are three major pilgrimages for the whole of Christianity: the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in order to walk in the steps of Christ; to Rome in order to visit the grave of the apostle Peter; and to Santiago de Compostella in order to visit the grave of the Lord’s brother James.
In her time, Jutta’s great grandmother had died on her way to Santiago, just like many pilgrims who did not return alive after a yearlong pilgrimage. And the crusaders had brought much news from the holy city of Jerusalem from their crusade in 1096. Jutta’s brother Meginhard also knew about the bloody crusades against the Jews in the cities of Mainz, Speyer and Worms in the same year. Because he found that he could not bear the absence of his sister, he endeavoured to hinder the pilgrimage of his sister: he financed the building of a women’s cell in the newly founded Benedictine Disibodenberg Monastery and he convinced his sister, by then age 20, to enter there as the new magistra; this was together with me, who was 14 years of age by then.
Besides the major pilgrimages, there were also many smaller pilgrimage paths in our country. Thus people went to see the miraculous images and the relics of saints in churches and monasteries. In 1164, the emperor Barbarossa and archbishop Reinald of Dassel brought the most precious relics of to the three Holy Kings, the magi, from Milan to Cologne. Later in my Rupertsberg Abbey, there was a miraculous image of the Holy virgin Mary to which people streamed.
For myself, I have not been on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, yet within the Empire, I had a far-reaching correspondence and finally, I have traveled a great deal in order to proclaim the Word of God. Known as the “trumpet of God”, even as a poor fearful little female, I was urged to speak to clergy men, doctors and other scholars in important places. Thus I traveled along the river Main to monastic communities in Mainz, Wertheim, Würzburg, Kitzingen, Ebrach and Bamberg. Along the river Mosel, I traveled southwards to Lothringen - to Metz and Krauftal - and I have been preaching publically in the cathedral town of Trier. Along the river Rhine, I came to Boppard, Andernach, Siegburg, and Cologne up to Werden. And finally, I travelled along the river Neckar to Swabia where I have visited Rodenkirchen, Maulbronn, Hirsau, Kirchheim and Zwiefalten.
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19 дек 2023
