A day with Hildegard and the Jews of Worms

Yesterday was a very full day. The 30 of us went by bus to the nearby site where the Disibodenberg Benedictine  monastery once stood. Now there are only ruins of that and a larger, later Cistercian monastery. That was where Hildegard was enclosed as a companion with the anchoress Jutta, sometime between 8 and 14 years of age - 1106-1112. She stayed enclosed there until Jutta died in 1136 when Hildegard was 38. 

As one who packed last July in Tucson, I now regret the heavier things I took out of my suitcase at the last minute. I have been in temps up to 100 F in Plum Village. Even here in Germany the weather was in the mid 80's last week. But this week the weather here has turned wet and fairly cold with the highs in the low 60's. We hiked up to the site on the top of a large, forested hill in a light rain, stopping along the way to read out loud snippets of Hildegard's life at Disibodenberg. We certainly got a feel for what it might have been like for her. 

Once at the top we found the small space that may have been the anchoress cell. It was long and narrow with a common wall to what would have been a chapel so that the anchoress and companions could listen to the mass and participate in the liturgy of the hours. On the opposite wall there would have been another window for the anchoress to give counsel to people who came and also to pass in food and take out waste. 

Disibodenberg  was where Hildegard received the directive that she was to write down her visions and when she resisted, was very sick until she finally relented and started writing her first book Scivias ("Know the Ways of The Lord") with the help of the monk Volmer.   

Our intrepid guide Christine, currently of Galway, Ireland. Her wise motto: "There is no such thing as bad weather; there is only inappropriate clothing."

 

In the afternoon we went to the city of Worms (pronounced Varm) where we were introduced to a very different part of medieval society: the life of the Jews in Worms. We visited the oldest Jewish cemetery in Europe, founded in 1076. 

The enclosure where the body was washed and prepared for burial and the basin for the preparers to ritually cleanse themselves after that work. 

We had a very knowledgeable guide, Renatya Nachman, an SDI member who came over from Frankfort just to give us this important history. After showing us this incredible cemetery she lead us in reciting the Kaddish for the dead from the attacks on September 11 in both 2001 in the US and in Chile in 1973.  

She then led us across the city, past the Dom or the Cathedral of Worms, whose building started in 1034, just a few years before Hildegard's birth, to the Jewish quarter, later to be the Jewish ghetto and to their synagogue which was also built in 1034. She pointed out the similarity in the pink stones of both buildings. She said that what she had heard about Hildegard and Jews was mixed. Hildegard had said/written the demeaning things about Jews typical of Catholic writers of her times. She had also admired the scholarship of the Jews and may have been conversant with Jewish scholars. 

Cathedral of Worms

Synagogue 

Street sign that says Jewish street. Renatya showed us the where the walls of the city had been. The Jews were only allowed to build outside the walls. She also told of the ever worsening perceptions of the Jews, from merchants and scholars to money-hoarders and people who sacrifice and eat children. The Jewish area and synagogue had been burned down many times over the centuries, the last time in 1945. 

In the synagogue