Читать книгу A Living Light - Edward L. Risden - Страница 6

In the midst of a synod in Rome, around the middle of the twelfth century, the Pope met with a number of his trusted counselors to consider the matter of a German nun: her visions, her outspokenness, her effect on the flock. Once obscure, she had risen to prominence and even popularity among the people by her piety and through the vehemence and magnitude of her visions–as well as through her skill in healing and her ability to help people with their daily problems. Her current exposure, all the way to the the apex of Church power, placed at risk her public and private voice and perhaps even her life, but she had no choice: she lived at and for the will of the Church, at and for the will of God. The voices of the council, grave and formal as they discussed her case, buzzed in the warm Italian air.

Such review, common enough, had found for once an uncommon subject, the writings of one Hildegard of Bingen, abbess and mystic. Pope Eugenius called not only his usual advisors, but also representatives of her own region and in fact her own secretary, who had seen her in the full flight of recounting her visions for him to record: Volmar, monk and scribe, served devotedly, recording her speech with accuracy and awe. A papal scribe (no manuscript records his name) recorded testimony as men of power, learning, and experience argued the fate of the learned nun, yet little known to the wide world, but loved among her folk. Some of the men sipped Tuscan wine. The Pope drank nothing, not even cool water, which he knew would have done him good: he wanted his thoughts fixed and precise. Volmar scratched his tonsure and drank several bowls of water as the discussion continued and as he knew his time to speak drew near. The Pope’s stern forehead and impassive, almost charcoal-grey eyes intimidated the monk, but something affable about the mouth made him feel eager to speak. He tried to calm himself to wait his turn.

Eugenius: Enlighten us to your opinion, Constance.

Herman: I have indeed sought her prayers, Eminence. She is as well known for their efficacy as for that of her medicines, which, though we value the less, draw the more worldly of her flock. And yet I fear to give too quick credence to these wild visions.

Eugenius: And you, Mainz: fair or fulsome?

Henry: Sincerity scatters like moths at the dawn, your Holiness, and yet I think her sincere. The visions seem to come conveniently, when she desires what the vision confirms, and yet I believe them from God.

Volmar: Visions, Holy Father, visions that spark joyous as a greenwood fire on the Christmas hearth, youthful as spring and ancient as air, dancing as mayday children yet somber as final unction.

Eugenius: Please, my son, we will hear you, but let us defer first to your father the abbot.

Volmar: Apologies, your Holiness.

Eugenius: She has been in your charge many years, Abbot. What then do you see in these visions, our dear Kuno? Have you not compassed her training?

Kuno: In truth, My Lord, neither drawn nor circled it. She is a willful one, given more to flowers, trance, and parchment than hours and office.

Eugenius: Has she failed in her duties or offended?

Kuno: Not so much failed or offended as strayed from a sister’s truer course, that of quiet, unobtrusive obedience. The folk flock to her, write to her . . .

Herman and Henry: So we have.

Kuno: . . . call her name in the towns, and for herself, she will fall into a fit or lingering humor until her latest fancy is dictated word for word for posterity.

Volmar: But her words, Holy Father, or rather God’s words through her, have such truth and power!

Herman: This council shall determine that.

Eugenius: We have reviewed much of her book, but we would hear more. If you please, Our Son, read to us and let the words speak, that we may judge whence they come.

Volmar: Gladly, Holiness. “Behold, in the forty-third year of my journey I saw a living light, from which heaven’s voice spoke to me, saying ‘Weak one of ashes, dust of dust, decay of decay, tell and write what you see and hear. Because you are simple and timid, do not speak according to the words of humans, but listen and tell plainly the wonder of God according to the words of God.’” (He thumbed through pages.) And later she tells, “Then I saw a multitude of living torches and, beneath, a wide lake deep as the mouth of a well that billowed forth clouds of smoke that climbed, till out of them fell like a shooting star the figure of a man into the smoking depths, and the heavens were brightened again, but the earth trembled.”

Herman: Surely that means Satan!

Volmar: And again later: “And then I saw a huge egg, encircled by flame, and within the egg a fire-red globe, and above the globe torches that kept the flame from burning the globe to ashes, and the globe would rise and fall toward the willing flame above or sink toward gloomy fire below.”

Herman: God and Satan calling the souls of the earth, and the saints interceding.

Volmar: “And next I saw a great, peaceful brightness full of eyes turned toward all the four corners of the world and, within, a purple lightening brightening the way for those who carried milk and bread and cheese, and among the folk a woman carrying a child inside her, and the brightness, from its own heart, reached within her, quickening the child from the womb.”

Herman: That is God bringing Christ to the world.

Eugenius: I see, Bishop, that you are as taken with these visions as I am.

Henry: And I, am, too, Milord, and so the people, who love her benign temper and humble wisdom without knowing her visions.

Eugenius: And you, our dear friend Bernard? You have kept silent. Tell us what you think–and why you gape so.

Bernard: Out of wonder rather than desire: these visions touch my soul.

Eugenius: As they do mine, Clairvaux. But you, Abbot, remain skeptical.

Kuno: Unconvinced, Milord. How does one prove visions, which may come from God or the Devil?

Eugenius: Can you believe such beauty and piety from the devil?

Kuno: Though she be sincere, she is simple, insistent, and, finally, Milord, but a woman.

Eugenius: And we, dear Abbot, are finally fearful, dust, and but men. The people do love this nun, and we would loath to see the Church, local or general, suffer from her censure when all can benefit from her talents and service. We do approve these remarkable visions, and with our thanks to all of you, we believe they may come from God and should be harbored, plenished, and praised as His gift. We declare this woman one of our living lights. Abbot, you will support and sustain our sister in her study, speech, and writing. For love of Christ do so.

Kuno: Holiness, shall we churchmen be led by a woman, and shall this woman drain the faith of the populace from us? We should wield God’s pen and be God’s flagons, filling souls with His spirit.

Herman: With His spirit or our own?

Eugenius: You must understand, Kuno, that we wish you no harm, but that we wish our Church good. As the Church flourishes, and as our flock flourish, so we flourish. Draw the water from the bread, and though it be but water, the flour blows away like dust. She tends the flowers that we may grow them, and she draws the hungry to us that we may feed them.

Kuno: And be fed by them. And to them. I defy this pragmatism, and I defy the vomit of these visions that reek of earth’s decay rather than heaven. Have we no pride?

Eugenius: We too must wear our humility, Abbot, and take our bread from the servants God sends us. Now hear me: you will nurture our daughter Hildegard, the Flower of Prophecy, and through her we shall all be fed. I will not be forsworn. I tell you, support and encourage her and serve your Church.

Kuno: (Aside.) Mother Church.

Eugenius: Abbot?

Kuno: As you will, Holiness.

Eugenius: So we will. Come, my friends, let us rise and take some air. A cool wind blows at the window at last, I think, and our day has drawn long.

So they spoke. Kuno, you see, had no particular fondness for intellectual women. What had happened, he asked himself, since on one else was paying him any attention, to the proper order of things, to Degree, respect for Estates, as God the Father had built the world? As he must bear subservience to the Pope, so the woman should endure subservience to him. Who can trust, he thought, the visions of women, churned by emotion and tainted with the guilt of Eve? The pope could be right, of course, must be right, unless evil or, rather, weariness, or political currents had obscured his sight or maladjusted his thinking. Though he must encourage her work, though, he need not permit insubordination; in fact, Kuno appointed his own particular duty to keep the woman first on her course to salvation and only second on the paths of knowledge—rather, third, he thought, after also her devotion to the duty of obedience, a duty he as well as anyone might teach her, knowing its gall himself. The road home, long, difficult in any day, would give him room and time to brood, to meditate how best to direct her course and to restrain his disappointment.

Far away, back in Germania, among the Rupertsberg streets, a crowd gathered for a festival: a brief time of pleasure amidst lives hounded by pain and want. Three rustic travelers in bright costumes, such colors as few of the lower classes could legally wear in those times, danced acrobatically, strong eastern accents rolling the German obliquely off their tongues. They paused for applause, to gather themselves for the next performance, and to address their audience.

Dayadva: Ai, those Russian crowds were tough. They like you, they stamp their feet, they don’t like you, they stamp their feet: who knows what they think?

Datta: At least they don’t draw their swords. Remember Mongolia?

Dayadva: Ai! How can I forget Mongolia?

Damyata: At least they don’t make borscht in Mongolia. Russia: borscht, borscht, borscht. Cold as a frozen schussbaba.

Dayadva: Boy: watch your language.

Datta: He’s all right, Dayadva. He’s coming of an age, and who can help but think of such things.

Dayadva: That’s all we need: Damyata girl chasing.

Damyata: Yes, we definitely need that, yes.

Datta: Both of you, calm yourselves. This crowd will be better than any people yet. I feel it. I know it.

Dayadva: I hope you are right, old father. Perhaps we stay a while here before we move on to Italy.

Damyata: They have nice girls in Italy?

Datta: Nice brown-eyed girls. I remember.

Damyata: I like blue eyes.

Dayadva: First a frozen schussbaba, now he want to be picky about eye color.

Datta: Shhh, both. Dall comes. Let us prepare to do show.

When a crowed began to gather, having heard their instruments or having seen their dancing, the performers started to clap their hands and sing. The crowd, ever eager for carnival, or even the merest break from daily drudgery, gave the acrobats no gifts yet, but they did supply their attention, and that usually had a way of turning itself at least into supper for itinerant actors and their like. Hardly the abstract and brief chroniclers of their time, they often felt grateful for an edible meal and a bit of something sufficient to carry them to the next town. Overlooking the crowd, the eldest spoke first, shouting gleefully and rubbing his balding skull.

Datta: I am Datta, grandfather.

Dayadva: And I, Dayadva, father.

Damyata: And I, Damyata, son.

All three: And this is Dall, mother.

All four: We come from a far land: to entertain you!

They sang and danced to such musical accompaniment as simple instruments could provide: Donau, son of Dayadva’s sister, simple of mind but devoted to his uncle, patted a tabor, turned a drone, or puffed into a shawm with more soul than talent or skill. Truly, they had invested nearly all of their wealth in their instruments and costumes, all but what they had spent on the horse and wagon that carried them from town to town.

In our poor, overfed age we may disdain such simple street-circus acrobatics as one could have found then, but the craftsfolk and peasants of Rupertsberg clapped along, sang or whistled with the performers when they knew the tunes, and gave at least a cheer, having little else to give and little else beyond work to do. Finding their song and dance had won praise, but nothing more material, and having learned something of the village before they performed, they enlisted help from members of their audience to perform a pantomime in which Dall, wife of Dayadva and mother of Damyata, costumed as a nun received a vision, was judged and nearly crucified by authorities, but was finally saved by a bright, mysterious figure dressed in blue. Her father-in-law, draped in a long, blue cloth, carrying before him a great mask in the shape of a smiling sun, strode before them, after which Dall moved among the crowed, healing her former persecutors and leading them all in a dance. Yes, folk would dance in those days, leaving their burdens for a few blessed moments beside the road until, reawakened by a soldier or official or priest, they would take them up once more. But on that day the sun and authorities alike shone, and even the bees seemed to stop in their course to observe and join the hum.

Datta: And now I, Datta, will perform a feat such as you have never seen before. Behold! And it is you who will save me from death.

He climbed upon a roadside wall, as his compatriots arranged and prepare some folk from the crowd to catch him. They well knew that if they won not only the admiration but the affection and familiarity of the people, they well might eat for the next several days, and regular meals make for strong and ready performers. Datta, making great show, spreading his arms wide, then straight overhead, sprung from his perch atop the wall into the human net his comrades had set for him; they caught him with a loud cheer not only for his courage, but for their own skill in breaking his fall. Datta sprung from their arms into a handspring, then bowed grandly.

Datta: Such are the kind people here, to spare the life of an old man for another show. And such is the great lady of the abbey, that we dedicate our play to her, known far and wide for her kindness, gentleness, and holiness.

“Encore! Encore! Let’s see it again, old Datta!” the crowd cried.

Dayadva: No, Father, once a day is enough.

“Encore! Once more, Old Man!” they called again.

Datta: They will have their show. Who are we to deny them? They buy our bread and milk–we hope.

Dayadva: Care, Father, care!

Datta climbed again to the cheers of the crowd. They aligned themselves, but as well may happen in such instances, their attention wandered, and when Datta made his trusting dive, they failed to catch him, and he and they tumbled together to the ground.

Dayadva: Father!

Crowd: He is hurt! Help him!

Dayadva: Father, why did I let you do it? What will we do?

Damyata: The great lady on the hill, surely she will help him.

Dall: Come, let us take him quickly to the abbess. She is a healer. Come, hurry! Help us, all of you!

The folk, sorry for their failure, but sorrier yet that they had got pulled into street acrobatics, dutifully lifted him and carried him up the hill to the nearby abbey to seek the help of the Great Lady on the Hill.

So their world brought them toward Hildegard’s gate.

Above the town, at Disibodenberg Abbey in a long, bright hallway, the nuns sang the Ordo Virtutum, number 7, the “Song about the Virgins,” a sober but joyful prayer, composed by Abbess Hildegard for their instruction and spiritual pleasure. The song drifted along like a breeze, as gentle to the singers as a waft of lilacs.

Irmengard: Lovely song.

Clementia: So long as we praise God and not ourselves.

Adelheid: So gloomy, Sister: can we not enjoy the song for the song?

Clementia: The song should guide us to God, not to ourselves and the dust of this world. Youth flies to pleasure rather than to Heaven.

Richardis: And may we not fly to both, joy in ourselves to be pleasures to God?

Clementia: Quite right, and wise for one so young. But let us not guide those younger yet astray.

Richardis: The devil flees such music; its coolness balms the soul and sends evil rushing from the flood of praise. So the song serves both God and us.

Adelheid: Thank you, Sister. I would learn and praise better.

Richardis: Then listen closely to Sister Clementia and heed her warnings; she will help you clear your path to heaven (Aside, to Adelheid she whispered then.) And be sure to enjoy the lovely songs!

As they paused from their singing to talk and enjoy the afternoon, Hildegard and Sister Keunegard joined them, walking arm-in-arm. Hildegard took great care with her charge, for the poor young woman, tall, thin, and pale, hung ever on the brink of madness.

Keunegard: Praise, O praise, let us sing the song, the song, O cry whelps and mongrels at His coming, O cry dust and ashes, slave and king, blood and bone, tree and leaf.

Richardis: How is she today, Mother Hildegard?

Hildegard: God save her, not at her best. Yet even in her dark hours, she sings God’s praise. Maybe we should all be so ill.

Keunegard: O do sing, O pulchrace facies, O pulchace.

To please God and Keunegard, the nuns sang, and Sister Clementia guided them outside, leaving Hildegard and Sister Richardis alone to talk. Fast friends since the day the younger woman’s wealthy family had placed her under Hildegard’s instruction, they often sat or walked together in the garden to talk and solve the world’s problems.

Nuns: O pulchrace facies,

Deum aspicientes et in aurora aedificantes,

O beatae virgines, quam nobiles estis.

Hildegard and Richardis watched Keunegard as Clementia led her out.

Hildegard: I believe she will be all right now that she is singing. She does love to sing. Please keep an eye on her, my dear. (Richardis followed Keunegard and Clementia, and Hildegard worries aloud.) Poor Keunegard, she suffers so with doubt and longing, doubting what she hears, longing for confirming visions. Lord, I believe; help now my unbelief. How can we know the source of our visions, self or God? If self, even then they draw me to God, thus surely not Infernal. Finally, we know only God and dust. The rest is empty as air.

Richardis (returning, smiling): Keunegard seems fine now. We may leave her under Clementia’s watchful eye, who would scare a lion into soft hymns.

Hildegard: I wish I knew what to do to help her. I do not want to discourage: her voices may come from God, and how well I know the silencing eye of authority and the choking muzzle of self-doubt.

Richardis: And yet you know your own visions, know them true. Do they not give some guide in hers?

Hildegard: I believe . . . I believe in my own visions because they burn upon my inner eye. How can I judge the burning of another’s eye or the ringing in another’s ear? Because I am an abbess, am I also a judge? I would open my heart to compassion and leave judgment to the Lord.

Richardis: But we must live holy and praise God, not defame Him among ourselves or others.

Hildegard: Maybe we praise by being. How can I silence another when I cannot silence myself, and would not? We must risk the voice of Satan to hear the voice of God. Prophecy weighs soul and body, circumscribes itself and pierces the heart—and damn the ill consequence. An hour after, I may not know myself what I have really seen, what may be God and what disease.

Richardis: Dearest Abbess and friend, you do know the truth of your visions. I have seen you in their midst, and I have seen them burn you, coming as they will, at His will. Do you not feel them even now, for poor Keunegard’s sake? Can you offer her no respite from ill dreams?

Hildegard: Perhaps I would deny mine for my sake even as I would deny Keunegard’s for hers. Believe me, they burn. But you are right: a moment’s memory turns them noonday clear. Hotter to hold than a fire-tongs, noisier than a dawn sky trumpeting spring rain they come, and sometimes ease thereafter. I see them now. The hand of God dips into my heart, and ever as the eye pants after His glory, He speaks: “Know the ways of the Lord; know His beauty.” And the trembling soul wakens with the beating of His voice to see the earth give birth to the morning sun, for so His spirit rises, a living fire, till my heart explodes in waves of embers that flood the paling sky, take shape, and fall again as God’s joyous tears.

As Hildegard fell silent, allowing herself a moment’s freedom to enter into the passions and sorrows of vision, footfalls pattered along the walkway, and Volmar, Hildegard’s secretary, burst upon them breathless, his feet pattering rapidly on the stones.

Volmar: News from Rome, holy Abbess: the Pope has graciously approved your work and would have you complete it. God be praised! You should have seen his face, lean and grave as a death mask, fit to grace a cathedral door to admonish all to holiness, and Kuno, of course, the old crab, scuttled about humphing and wishing for himself a cardinal’s robe and red enough in the face to match it when the Pope himself praised and blessed your visions.

Hildegard: Dear Brother, please slow down and catch your breath. We have time to hear about Rome and your travels. But you look thin. Are you well?

Volmar: Thin from joy and pale from awe at the holy city, a city such as you have never seen, Sister, splendid, bright with gold, churning with pomp: who could eat in such a place? And the caravans of pilgrims, constant as the rush and flood of the Tiber!

Hildegard: Then praise be to God you are free again of gold and pomp, and we have pilgrims enough here among the poor and sick who need our care.

Volmar: You are a little Rome in yourself, Sister. You open eyes with faith and hearts with love, seal wounds with weeds, sooth harms with herbs, and move the slack soul with music. My pilgrimage was not there, but here, to serve God by serving you.

Hildegard: Serve God, not me, and we will all win His praise. Welcome home, my friend. Has the Abbot arrived also?

Volmar: Yes, and I have no doubt you shall see him soon.

Hildegard: Well, be that as it must. Brother, I have more to dictate soon and letters to write. Please come tomorrow.

Volmar: At your pleasure, Abbess. Oh, Abbess, one more thing. How can I say this? We should arrange for secretarial duty for you when I am gone.

Hildegard: Richardis serves me in your absence and can do so again when you travel.

Volmar: I thought to make provision for after my death, Abbess.

Hildegard: Surely we need not. You will outlive me. You had better, Brother.

Volmar: The work is too important to take a chance that no one will be here to replace me.

Hildegard: Let us not talk of that now. Life goes as it will, and God has given me you and Richardis as help and friends. For now let us attend to the present and its visions.

Volmar: Yes, Abbess.

The dutiful secretary bowed to both women and left them. Richardis’ blue eyes shone, and her smile showed healthy white teeth unusual in those days of the world.

Richardis: Voluble he is as the creeks when the snow melts in spring, and flitting as a sparrow.

Hildegard: But kind and chaste, faithful and good.

The two women heard a rustle of voices and many feet coming up the pathway. The nuns led the folk of the town, who carried Datta, injured in his fall, and brought him before the abbess.

Hildegard: How can we help you?

Dayadva: Dear Lady, poor Father is hurt from a fall performing in the marketplace. Please help him. He is our life and living. We have heard you can heal. Help him, please.

Hildegard: (She looks at him, then speaks to Richardis.) Boil water and bring cloth and ashes of blackthorn, also apple salve. Take Irmengard to assist you. Clementia, clear some space for us here. Adelheid, prepare a bed of soft rushes in the infirmary. (To Datta:) How are you? Can you speak?

Datta: Foolish, as old men often are.

Dayadva: He took a fall upon his head. I fear the arm and shoulder broke, too.

Dall: Do help him, Lady. Dear old father.

Hildegard: I’ll do all I can. God willing, we shall find healing for him, or at least some ease for his pain. Let us try the arm. A slight pull here. Yes. (He yells. Irmengard enters with cloths and bandages. Hildegard takes one of the cloths and binds and slings his arm and shoulder. Richardis enters with a pot of water and medicines.) Here, apply a poultice of the blackthorn to his head after you clean the wound. I will use the salve on his face and eyes. How are you, Old Father?

Datta: I think the world will put up with me somedeal longer.

Hearing that, the crowd cheered, partly for the old acrobat’s well-being, partly out of relief that their day need meet no further interruption, and partly because they wondered and feared if the mere presence of the famous Abbess had not been sufficient to heal him. Young Datta glanced from Hildegard’s eyes to his grandfather’s wounds to the luminous young face of Adelheid.

Hildegard: Take him to the infirmarr—gently! He will need rest, but I believe he will be all right. We will pray for him.

Dall: Thank you, Lady.

Datta: We cannot thank enough. We must pay.

Hildegard: Don’t worry about pay. Care for your father and pray. And caution him about such stunts in the future.

Datta: Who can tell old man what to do?

Dall: Da, who can?

Damyata: Bless you, Lady. Will you help the great Lady, young woman?

Adelheid: I will do what I can to assist, of course.

Damyata: Then I believe Grandfather shall live.

The folk, guided by Hildegard’s nuns, carried Datta to the infirmary, cheerfully singing a drinking song as they went, not thinking so much about where they found themselves as feeling a glee that a fellow creature had, they believed, had cheated death. Hildegard waited to take a breath of air and calm her mind of visions.

Having fallen in together at the end of the train of folk, Adelheid and Damyata briefly caught each other’s eyes. They paused, blushed. Each stammered a word, then the two hurried to catch up with the others. Their feet fell so lightly, propelled with the energy of youth, that they almost seemed to Hildegard to skip. When the watchful nun was free of migraines, little escaped her attention.

Hildegard: This injury we can heal, but what about the next? Who knows? How close we are to love, and how close to death.

In those days monks and nuns often shared abbeys, though they lived largely segregated lives. At the opposite end of Disibodenberg Abbey lived a cadre of monks. They entered the abbey through the main public hall that connected, through heavy, locked doors, the halves of the community. Shying away from the ruckus opposite, they prepared to welcome their abbot, Kuno, who had just returned from the synod in Rome.

First monk: Word is she has had the work approved by the Pope himself.

Second monk: And that she has had a vision proclaiming she should move her nuns to Rupertsberg.

First monk: We know what the abbot will say to that. She brings money to the abbey from the rich and powerful. Alms come from everywhere for her prayers, and gifts have arrived the last three days as thanks for her healings. Everyone knows her, from peasants to kings.