My Pilgrimage to my Ancestors

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Last Days and Good-bye to Europe

I'm in a beautiful apartment next to the airport for my last night. It's 20 minutes till the cab picks me up so I may have to finish this at home. 

We had the closing circle of the pilgrimage on Wednesday morning with an interpretive dance by Betsey of the mature Hildegard reflecting over our journey and hers. 

"Let me be a feather on the breath of God" - Hidegard

Then I was off to Bacharach where I stayed with couchsurfing host Astrid Krzywicki-Wallmer, owner of the Rusticana Restaurant. She and her husband (deceased in 2010) bought the place over 37 years ago and live on the third floor. The place is the middle point of Bacharach's Main Street, right next to the old post office where the horses used to be switched out - like our old pony express. 

The Rusticana with a view of the main church and old Posthof. 

With Astrid in her cozy place. 

Will have to finish this from Tucson 

A Day on the Rhine

We were so fortunate on Monday to have our own little ship the St. Nikolas to cruise the romantic, castle-filled lower Rhine from Bingen to St. Goar. The weather continued to cycle between sun, clouds and rain as it has since our arrival. 

Bacharach - where I stayed Wednesday night - from the middle of the river on Monday. 

The Loreley - the mythic rock from which the sirens bedazzled the sailors, actually the area where the Rhine deepens causing powerful currents. 

Castle above village of St. Goar 

Our fearless leader Christine keeping warm in the glass-covered interior. 

The 70 and over group!

The group in their 50's. I am in the 60's group so I will have to get that picture later. 

Yet another great castle!

The two big hotels are over 400 years old. 

Heading for the bus after a full day on the beautiful Rhine. 

And then the sun came out to shine on Rudesheim, where Hildegard's second monastery was located (now the parish church from which we processed on Tuesday. 

Hildegard's Feast Day - first as official saint and doctor of Roman Catholic Church

But of course this is a long-standing local event. As I said in the last post, Hildegard has long been honored as a saint in Germany, a true saint of the people. 

Great statue of Hildegard 

We first went for lunch at the Hildegard Forum, a private foundation that honors Hildegard's broad legacy: especially her medicinal and herbal knowledge. We had a wonderful and very healthy meal based on Hildegard's nutritional ideas. Even the centerpiece at each table was special. 

Then Betsy Beckman performed her wonderful interpretive dance on Hildegard's life. 

We sang our Hildegard-viriditas song in the abbey full of people - will post link to a YouTube video later. 

And then we joined the celebration and procession at the church where her second monastery was originally built (now a parish church). And then we joined the nuns for vespers at the Abbey. Only once a year on St. Hildegard's feast day, they process in for vespers. At both the procession and vespers they sang (and had English version for us): Holy God, We Praise Your Name - one of Mom's favorites. I felt her there with me. 

What a day!

Along the way of the procession there were many personal altars to Hildegard. 

The nuns of Hildegard's Abbey processing out after vespers. 

The 'inside' scoop of why Hildegard was finally canonized - Visiting her two monasteries

Starting not too long after her death, there have been numerous attempts to have Hildegard made a saint but some always went wrong and in the end she was never canonized until last year - one of the last official acts of Benedict XVI. 

Sr. Ancilla gave us the lowdown. (See her above in a ceremony where we donated a tree to be planted in their garden.) She is a nun at Eibingen Abbey, the second monastery Hildegard founded. Sr. Ancilla recounted the previous attempts to get Hildegard canonized, including the last attempt in the 1970's, attempts that involved lots of money on the part of the sponsoring group. Now Hildegard has  always been considered a saint by the German people, including, it seems, a German pope. In 2010 Benedict gave a series of talks on "St. Hildegard" and the sisters at Hildegard's only existing monastery were quick to point out to the pope that the church had never formally recognized Hildegard. So they were told to get all the documents in again, which they did, and she was rather quickly (for Rome) canonized and made the fourth woman doctor of the church in 2012. 

The current Eibingen Abbey was built in the 1900's and is not in the exact spot where Hildegard founded it. We will see that church on Tuesday, September 17, her feast day. 

Walking to the Abbey

The Abbey church - but which has none of her relics, a big point of contention I hear. 

Statue of Hildegard in front of the church

View from the abbey - the Rhine and across the Rhine the city of Bingen - note also the church of St. Roch on the far hill, which we also visited and which does have relics of Hildegard (a rib & I can't remember what else). 

Earlier in the day we visited the site of the first monastery Hildegard founded very close by & across the Nahe River from Bingen a the Nahe flows into the Rhine. Unfortunately, this Rupertsberg convent was destroyed in 1632 by the Swedes. 

When they put in this railroad years ago right where the abbey had been, they uncovered the underground crypt of the abbey. We were fortunate to have as our guide Annette Esser, a German Hildegard scholar who studied at Union Theological Seminary and translated Barbara Newman's book on Hildegard into German. Annette has founded with others the Scivias Institute for continued scholarly work on Hildegard and hopefully more money to preserve and make more accessible all sights connected to Hildegard as it is certain that the number of visitors will continue to increase. 

Annette stood at the railing to show us the railroad tracks below that cut through what was Hildegard's Rupertsberg monastery that she founded with much protest from the abbot of Disibodenberg. 

Here you can see the site of the Rupertsberg monastery on the right. 

Here is a painting of how it looked. 

And a model of the convent in the museum. 

In the crypt of the Rupertsberg monastery 

Annette shows us a copy of the edict from the Emperor Barbarosa giving Hildegard perpetual ownership of the land and monastery - even though later Hildegard wrote him scathing letters decrying his role in the papal schisms.  

Annette leads us in a psalm in the Rupertsberg crypt. 

Going to the Hildegard Museum on the Rhine. 

Hildegard's visions as illustrated in her many books. 

An herb garden outside the museum with plants described in Hildegard's book. 

Side altar at St. Roch's Church in Bingen where some of Hildegard's relics are found. 

Our guide Martin Gruger, a Benedictine oblate from Bingen, tells us about the yearly pilgrimage up to St. Roch's by the people of Bingen occasioned by a promise made during the Plague.