In 1094, Byzantine Emperor Alexius Commenus I, despite the forty year split between Rome and Constantinople, requested assistance from Western Christendom against the Moslem Seljuk invasion of his lands.
On the pretense of returning the land of Canaan/Israel to Christian domination and away from Saracen Moslims, Pope Urban II in 1095 initiated what was called the People’s Crusade as a combination of pilgrimage to fulfill penances imposed upon the people in pardoning their “sins,” and a war of conquest. Widely acclaimed throughout the Holy Roman Empire with the papal promise of forgiveness of sins, and without being sent to purgatory, and without any legal restrictions on their behavior or consequences therefrom, the First Crusade began.
Walker states,
A rabble of some 150,000 to 300,000 persons, mostly the dregs of society mixed with military mercenaries, set out across southern Europe, torturing, killing and looting as they went. One division slaughtered 10,000 Jews in the Rhineland (long before they ever got out of Europe), then forgot about the Holy Land and dispersed. Two other divisions did so much harm in Hungary that native soldiers rose up against them and destroyed them all. Multitudes died along the way, of sickness, of hunger, or injuries brought on by their violence. A remnant survived to plunder the too-hospitable Greeks, then to enter Constantinople. There, stronger crusaders sold off weaker ones as slaves, to finance their own provisions. Finally a remaining 7,000 crossed the Bosporus and were attacked by the Turks who killed them all.106
One might be persuaded to think that this inauspicious, lawless and bloody disaster would have put an end to the idea of further crusades. But, that did not happen. Quite the contrary, the next 300 years were marred by a constant succession of crusades from Europe to the East.
In 1098, the army of Godfrey de Bouillon massacred the entire population of Jerusalem. The Jews were herded into their synagogues and burned alive. In 1099 crusaders take back Jerusalem from both the Jews and the Moslems. They establish four crusader states, in Palestine, Anatolia, and Syria.107
In 1148, the Second Crusade begins. In 1204, the crusaders destroy Constantinople, the heart of Eastern Christian orthodoxy. Witnesses wrote that the city was ravaged and that the most holy church of St. Sophia was the scene of “bloody and sacrilegious orgies.”108 But in 1187 the Islamic leader Saladin defeats the crusaders and restores Jerusalem to Islamic control.
In 1255 Moslem Almohads abandon much of their lands in Spain, and Moslem power is eventually reduced to just their kingdom of Granada. By 1291 the crusades end as they began, in disgrace, as the Moslems defeat the Christian knights and mercenaries, recapturing Palestine.
Dr. Achterberg says that “women too went on the Crusades with high spirits and a keen anticipation for the exotic lands and customs of the Near East. Some traveled with children and possessions on a single beast of burden. Others were led in high style by one ‘goldenfooted Queen’ who was probably Eleanor of Aquitaine, (married at the time to the time to the King of France).” She continues: “Conservative estimates of the Crusade-related deaths are in the millions. The First Crusade alone claimed some 800,000 lives on both sides; many died before reaching their destination. What appears to us as senseless death and injury was fueled by the papal (of the Roman church) promises of absolution (of sins) for all who went to the Holy Land.”109 Because of the vast numbers of people wounded, struck down by new and incurable diseases, left along the long trek to the Holy Land on the instructions of the Church, there was an immediately perceived need to do something to help. The Church itself was the only system capable of such a massive undertaking which had authority to mobilize across secular, feudal boundaries.
From the Crusades came new medical orders directly under church control: the Order of Lazarus (devoted to care of lepers), the Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem (Hospitalers), and the Order of the Knights of the Temple of Solomon (Templars). Alongside these male orders was the development of women’s nursing services, who served without having authority. Women also were members of some of the Orders in the newly built hospitals, as nurses, again without authority. Real medical knowledge had become primitive, since the Church had prohibited its teaching. The general conditions were deplorable, except for the French hospitals built by the king, St. Louis, and his sister Maguerite of Bourgogne, and the leprosanitaria. (In fact they were so clean and well run that some patients tried to fake leprosy just to get other treatments in them!)
By the end of the Crusades, nearly 300,000 European women were serving as nurses in the various Church orders. Men, however, formed Guilds to professionalize their skills and were recognized by their tools on signs: lancets, pincers and saws.110
THE WOMEN OF THE MIDDLE AGES
The women of the Middle Ages vary greatly in terms of their status, education, avocations, professions, religious piety and health. Where they differed very slightly from one another was their legal standing, their ability to be self-determining or permission to venture out of tightly prescribed roles. The unmarried woman as she matured had more legal status but fewer options for self-sustenance. The married woman was almost constantly pregnant, unless her husband traveled away from home for long periods as happened during the Crusades. The widowed woman was accorded the most freedom if she were able to either manipulate her grown sons into supporting her ideas or if a noblewoman and were entitled to join a convent as Abbess. While widows were supposed to remarry, particularly if they inherited estates, many did not and thereupon enjoyed peace and freedom from the strictures of men for the first time in their lives. Women also rose above the norm in religious life, freeing themselves from being enclosed within boundaries by venturing into the realm of the mystical and being granted power through their visionary fascination. Noblewomen found means to power through the way in which they ran estates, engaged in political intrigue and nurtured offspring to be influential. Townswomen learned trades and operated businesses, ran taverns, lent money. Peasant women often helped to manage large tracts of land, including rentals, brewed ale, helped keep village stability and peace. In every walk of life except the nobility, many women were midwives and healers. Most women were mothers. Except whatever ordinary women could do by cunning and innate talent, the average female was bound to rigid, feudal systems that left little room for innovation. But innovate they did, nevertheless, and the following are some of their stories.
Hildegard of Bingen
Two years after the First Crusade, a woman of extraordinary intellect and talent was born. Her name was Hildegard, and she came into the world as the tenth child of an aristocratic and wealthy family in 1098. She would later achieve world renown as Hildegard of Bingen, but as a mere eight year old child, she was “offered to God as a tithe” by her family and sent away from home to serve as handmaiden and spiritual companion to a devout, reclusive woman named Jutta.111 The family was apparently able to provide the dowry to the convent but did not have enough to provide for the marriage of their tenth child, a daughter. This was not an unusual practice, because women of status were commanded either to serve a husband or the church, and there were few choices outside those two. Either choice must be provided for by their father in form of payment to place them elsewhere and by doing so, the patriarchy was no longer obligated to support the woman for the rest of her life.
In 1112, Jutta was named Abbess leader of the Benedictine women’s cloister at Disbodenberg, originally a pre-Christian spiritual site near the Rhine River in present day Germany. Under her mentor’s tutelage, Hildegard studied and matured. In 1136, Jutta died, and at age 38, Hildegard was chosen to lead her congregation of women as Abbess. About ten years later, in 1147, she and her women’s community moved to a new cloister built for them near the town of Bingen, where she resided for the remainder of her life. Hildegard died, Sept. 17, 1179, at the age of 81 years old. Her personal accomplishments are vast: She is a first class artist, poet, painter, musician, and mystic. Matthew Fox in his introduction to her work Book of Divine Works sa
ys that she brings together the three essential elements of a living cosmology: science, a healthy mysticism and art. Neither science or theology is enough to awaken people. Hildegard possessed all three. She wrote three major visionary books: Scivas (Know the Ways) 1141–5; Liber Vitae Meritorium (the Book of Life’s Merits) 1158–63; and DeOperatione Dei (the Book of Divine Works) 1163–73.
Her scientific books are a handbook on nature Physica, and a handbook on holistic health Causae et Cura. She also wrote two books on the lives of saints and a commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict, founder of her Order. Completing the compendium are numerous letters of correspondence to Popes, Kings, Bishops and friends, giving advice, chastising their failures, and sharing her vision of the world here and hereafter.
Of her music, Hildegard herself said that singing words reveals their true meaning directly to the soul through bodily vibrations. Matthew Fox writes that her musical “compositions are incredibly physical. This makes wonderful sense if we realize that she was a physical scientist as well as a musician. Singing her music comes close to hyperventilation at times. When she writes about the Spirit, you know she understands the Spirit as wind, as breath, because you become the wind. When she writes about Divine Mysteries, you sing out of the deepest space of your physical being from the comfort of normal range to the extremes of your vocal potential. Her music reveals that we, too, are divine mysteries. And living is profoundly erotic.”112 Hildegard, whether or not it was part of her conscious awareness, was bringing forward from most ancient times the connection between women’s music and the divine, which was so integral to the ceremonies of Cybele, Isis, and many of the other Goddesses who were depicted traveling with lute players, holding cymbals in their own hands, and for whom the human voice singing was prayer and tribute to the universe herself.
Here are three of the songs of Hildegard:
1.O Moving Force of Wisdom
O moving face of Wisdom, encircling the Wheel of the Cosmos,
Encompassing all that is, all that has life, in one vast circle.
You have three wings; the first unfold aloft in the highest heights.
The second dips it’s way dripping sweat on the Earth
Over, under, and through all things whirls the wind.
Praise to you, O Wisdom, worthy of Praise.
2.To the Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit, making life alive,
Moving all things, root of all created being,
Cleansing the cosmos of all impurity, effacing guilt,
Anointing wounds.
You are lustrous and praiseworthy life,
You waken and re-awaken all that is.
3.To Mary – Sancta Maria
Hail to you O greenest, most fertile branch!
You buddeth forth admidst breezes and winds
In search of the knowledge of all that is holy.
When time was ripe
Your own branch brought forth blossoms,
Hail, greetings to you!
The heat of the sun exudes sweat from you
Like balsam’s perfume.
In you, the most stunning flower has blossomed
And gives off its sweet odor to all herbs and roots,
Which were dry and thirsting before your arrival.
Now they spring forth in fullest green!
Because of you, nourishment is given to the human family
And great rejoicing to those gathered round the table.
And so, in you O gentle Virgin
Is the fullness of joy, everything that Eve regretted.
Now let endless praise resound to the Most High.
With the exception of the last two lines, this could have been a hymn to the agricultural Great Goddess as far back as Neolithic times. When Hildegard speaks of Knowledge and Wisdom, this is resplendent with Egyptian, Gnostic and Anatolian Goddess hymns, at least in the fragments that have made their way to us today.
The metaphor of Earth, Wisdom and a woman’s spirit providing abundance is the same as the ages-old religion of the Goddess and her provisions for her people over the previous seven thousand years. Hildgard had no exact or conscious knowledge of this, but in her mystical communication with the spiritual cosmos, these messages came through to connect her, the people of her own time and, therefore, us with that most universal understanding from women’s sacred heritage.
There is no evidence that Hildegard ever practiced medicine, and she makes no claims to have received the gifts in visions, which makes her intriguing. According to Dr. Achterberg, her theories and methods are different from any other works. They differ from Galen or other ancient “fathers of medicine.” “She wrote a surprisingly passionate and factual description of the biological aspects of female orgasm that appears nowhere else in the writings of the Middle Ages.”113
Yet her practical knowledge included 485 plants, homeopathic doses of them along with exercise and dietary practices. She recommended treating diabetes by omission of sweets and nuts. She understood basic blood circulation. She wrote of the dangers of mandragora (mandrake root) known to create alternate reality. She believed helm oak hostile to air spirits and recommended home fumigation, jasper to aide childbirth.
Achterberg says that Hildegard believed the differences in herbs of East and West were that Eastern herbs have virtues and medicinal properties and Western herbs have magical ones, of less help to human health.114
Hildegard wrote of magic as the source of influence over body and soul. She recommended powders to be taken against evil spirits. So for Hildgard, as for most of her era, there was, of course, counter-magic. “Astrology, gemology, and dream divination also had a place in Hildegard’s psychopharmacopeia despite her protests that such arts were evil. Hildegard was the most profound scientist of her time, representing the state of the healers art.”115
At the time of the Greeks and before, it was believed that dis-ease had two components. One could be treated physically through baths, massage, herbs and compounds either taken by mouth or rubbed into the body. The other required spiritual assistance through divination, Shamanic journeys, and other forms of consulting the universal knowledge for answers to healing the patient. Hildegard brings forth a similar construct, treating the whole person, physically and spiritually. Dr Achterberg writes bluntly that “It was reasoning like hers (Hildegard) that sparked the Inquisition and the witch-hunters to destroy the most devout, skilled healers among womankind. Hildegard was the last of her breed.”116
To close Hildegard’s vast contribution, here are some verses from her Light of Illumination:
Alleluia – Verse for the Virgin
Alleluia! Light
Burst forth from your untouched
Womb like a flower
On the farther side
Of death. The World-tree
Is blossoming. Two realms become one.117
The Convent
We do have the names and accomplishments of some other Abbesses of this time such as Pertonilla, first Abbess of Fontinault who housed lepers, prostitutes, and women about to give birth; Matilda, sixth Abbess of the same institution, had 5,000 people under her jurisdiction; Heloise taught and practiced healing arts at the hermitage of Paraclete after her ill-fated marriage to Abelard; Herrade, Abbess of Hohenberg in Alsace, wrote the Garden of Delight which is a medical text on botany; Hilda at Whiby was famous for her knowledge of Nordic Runestones and their magical properties; Elizabeth of Shonau was a mystic; Hedwig of Silesia, patron saint of Poland, built monasteries and nursed.118
What then do the lives of these women of the High Middle Ages tell us about the lives and rights of Western European women during these years of 1000 to 1300?
The first aspect of note is their dedication to the human condition, whether through healing, mysticism, or educating others. The second has to be the extent of learning they personally possessed, wrote about and taught to other women. At this time, most people of all classes except church hierarchy were unable to read or write, either th
eir own language or classical Latin, the official language of the Roman Church. Religious services in churches were said in Latin; the religious texts were transcribed in Latin, not in any local vernacular. Education of secular women was not permitted by the church and was, therefore, not available to them as a means of advancement, as it was to men.
How was it then, that these women Abbesses were so learned? For that information we need to backtrack a bit to the inheritance systems of feudal Europe. Called primogeniture, this structure, in order to preserve the land-based wealth holdings of the noble family, precluded all but the eldest son from inheriting physical property. All other inheritances were based on goods and income derived from the agricultural enterprises, such as monetary rents, services, and produced goods. Unless there were no male heirs, daughters were not permitted to inherit land/fiefs or kingdoms, but neither were younger sons. (This is in direct opposition to the matriarchal inheritance systems in which daughters inherited directly from mothers, kept the clan name of the mother, and usually remained in the mother’s household even when with a spouse. Many, if not most, of the peasant people across Europe still held to the older system at this time.)
Therefore, solutions for mature children of the nobility had to be found, and the families devoted a considerable amount of time to their disposition. Sons devoid of inheritance were sent to serve either in the military as knights or to serve the Church of Rome within the hierarchy as clerics. Some family subsidy may have accompanied them, but mostly they were to find their own way and earn their own fortunes. This was of vital importance to these young men of the knighthood because without some income, they were unable to purchase a woman to be wife. These knights became prime clients of the houses of prostitution in the cities and sources of concern for civil authorities when they caroused or fought during leave, or when not in military service.
Daughters of the Inquisition Page 29