Jutta von Sponheim

Jutta von Sponheim, also known as Jutta of Spanheim or Jutta of Disibodenberg, was a twelfth-century German noblewoman, Benedictine anchoress, and spiritual teacher, remembered above all as the magistra who formed Hildegard of Bingen in the monastic life. She was born in 1091 into the house of the Counts of Sponheim, a powerful noble family whose lands lay in the Rhineland, within the Holy Roman Empire, in the region of present-day Rhineland-Palatinate. Her father was Count Stephen II of Sponheim. As a daughter of high nobility she would ordinarily have been destined for a dynastic marriage, but medieval accounts of her life, especially the Vita of Lady Jutta written at Disibodenberg not long after her death, relate that a serious illness in her youth led her to vow perpetual virginity and to seek a life of enclosure and prayer rather than the court.

In the first decade of the twelfth century Jutta adopted an increasingly austere manner of life. On 1 November 1112, the feast of All Saints, she was formally enclosed as an inclusa, or anchoress, at the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg, situated on a hill at the confluence of the Nahe and Glan rivers. With her were enclosed a small number of young girls of noble family who had been entrusted to her spiritual care. Among them was Hildegard of Bingen, born in 1098, who had been offered by her parents as an oblate some years earlier, when she was about eight years of age. Jutta thus became magistra of a tiny female community attached to the male Benedictine abbey. From the confined space of the anchorage, which opened onto the monastery church, she taught her disciples the Latin Psalter, the rhythms of the Divine Office, and the observances of the Rule of Saint Benedict, while remaining under the overall authority of the abbot of Disibodenberg.

Jutta's personal asceticism was severe even by the standards of her age. Contemporary and near-contemporary witnesses describe her as wearing a hair shirt, going barefoot throughout the year, fasting rigorously, and reciting the entire Psalter each day. She received at her window both the sacrament and a stream of visitors who sought counsel, prayers, and healing; she was reputed to possess prophetic insight and to work miracles. She also performed works of mercy insofar as enclosure allowed, including care for the poor and the sick. Her most lasting influence was upon Hildegard, whom she raised from childhood in the cloister and who later succeeded her as head of the women's community. Hildegard's subsequent career as visionary, abbess, correspondent of popes and emperors, and author of theological, musical, and scientific works was grounded in the literacy and Benedictine formation she received from Jutta, even though Hildegard's public mission and writings went far beyond the hidden life her teacher had chosen.

Jutta died at Disibodenberg on 22 December 1136, the same calendar date traditionally assigned to her birth, at about forty-five years of age. She was buried in the abbey church, and her grave became a focus of local devotion. After her death the sisters elected Hildegard as their magistra. Jutta has been venerated as blessed in Benedictine calendars and in the Rhineland, with a feast observed on 22 December, but she was not the object of a formal papal canonization of the kind that later became standard. Historical knowledge of her depends chiefly on the Vita Juttae, on the Life of Hildegard, and on scattered references in twelfth-century monastic sources. Although she remains a relatively obscure figure beside her famous pupil, she is a well-attested example of the noble anchoress of the high Middle Ages and a central person in the early history of the women's community that would later flourish at Rupertsberg under Hildegard.