Who is the nun from Heidenheim? A study of Hugeburc's Vita Willibaldi

Medium Aevum, Spring, 2002 by Pauline Head

Boniface's position with regard to activities appropriate for religious women seems to have been inconsistent. After his death in 757 the situation worsened; Carolingian reform legislation drafted between 779 and 847 reiterates rime and again that female religious are to be confined to their cloisters. (54) Yet c.800 Alcuin wrote to Abbess AEthelburg `advising her not to blame herself if she was unable to fulfil her vow of pilgrimage, and to give money she would have spent on travel to the poor'. (55)

Writing her story of Willibald's pilgrimage in the late eighth century, Hugeburc was speaking from the midst of these changes. Whether she would have been allowed to experience the adventure of pilgrimage herself, had she so desired, is questionable. Her biography, which has been described as a `hodoeporicon', (56) a `guide for pilgrims', and a `travel book', (57) is a response to, as well as a record of, her male kin's pilgrimage; it raises questions about the relationship between writer and subject, and about the boundaries between woman and man, nun and pilgrim, stasis and movement. Hugeburc could have distanced herself from Willibald, constructing firm gender definitions, on the basis of his activity (his labour and vision), her enclosure (her listening and writing). Yet through her writing--through the interest in place which structures her narrative--she shares in the excitement and the spiritual growth of his activity, implicitly conveying their similarities and drawing them together. Since Hugeburc heard Willibald's story `through the dictation of his mouth' (`de ori sui dictatione'), and wrote `nothing unless heard from him' (`ab ipso audita'), to separate definitively their two voices and distinguish their ideas is not possible. Hugeburc was certainly the author of the vita. She `composed' the text, in her metaphor `plucking' and `selecting' what to include and then `gathering' and `presenting' aspects of Willibald's story; she uses the verbs `decerpere', `excerpere', `conpagare', and `edissere'. As Hugeburc inscribes in her cryptogram, she `orders' her material (`ordinando hec scribebam'); she also writes, at the beginning of her narrative, `gracilem opusculi huius coniecturam glomerando ordire decrevero ordinandoque texere' (p. 88, lines 11-12) (`I have decided to arrange and weave, by collecting and ordering [the events of Willibald's life], a simple interpretation of [in?] this little work'). (58) If in the end their voices blend, this only indicates their common perspective. (59)

Hugeburc shares the pilgrim's fascination for distant places, an interest which, at times, seems purely secular. (60) She `selects' Willibald's observations about the wonderful herds of cattle he encounters near the river Jordan as an event worth dwelling upon in her narrative:

   Et ibi sunt armenta mirabilia longo dorso et brevis cruribus, magnis
   cornibus creati; omnes sunt unius coloris, ostreae. Paludes sunt profundi
   ibi; et quando estuale tempore magna solis caumatio de caelo terram urire
   solet, illa armenta tollentes se vadunt ad palude et demergant se toto
   corpore nisi caput solum. (p. 96, lines 10-13)

   (And there are wonderful cattle there, created with a long back, short
   legs, and large horns; they are all of one colour, dark red. There are deep
   marshes; and when in summertime the great heat of the sun comes to the
   earth from the sky, those cattle rise up and, rushing to the marsh,
   submerge their whole bodies except their heads.)