We'll come back to this monk again later. But let's talk about where all of this medieval chant for the church was created. It was not created at urban churches, cathedrals, but for rural monasteries. What you see on the screen here from the Basque region of Southern France. Many in the sixth and seventh centuries were on isolated coasts particularly in Ireland. We see the remains of one of them here, and here are two more slides. We have an image of Jumieges in France, a large monastery that flourished in the tenth century. And then finally the Abbey, the Benedictine Abbey Fontenay, where you can still go and hear the service as sung there in the church to your right today. What did the monks and nuns do at these monasteries and convents? They worked and they prayed. Laboro, oro. I work, I pray. They worked to feed their bodies and they prayed to save their souls. And they did this on a regular schedule as set forth by the rule of Saint Benedict. In a little book written again by Saint Benedict in the sixth century. Here's my copy of it, at least more or less my copy, the cover is sort of fallen over through use. It tells us that the monks and nuns came together to pray eight times a day. And, a ninth time to celebrate the mass, the spiritual high point of the day. Usually around nine o'clock in the morning when they took communion with the Lord. Let me take you to my monastery. Here you see it on the screen. I once stayed there many years ago. Saint Pierre de Solesmes. South, southwest of Paris. About 100 miles away from Paris. Here's the monastery that you see very imposing. I lived here actually in the first floor, the closest windows. I was allowed, no alarm clock, no radio and certainly no cell phone. But I had to attend all of the services in the church. How in the world did I wake up? Well, the ringing of the bells. Actually the french word for bell, cloche, equals our or gives us our clock. And the Latin horo, english for hour. So the bells called me to make my way over to the church. Every guest who lives in the monastery has to attend a services of the monks in their church. When I worked I went into the library to study Gregorian chant and I took my meals here in the refectory, the dining hall no talking no conversation. The Abby sits at one end and someone reads the daily newspaper of the Roman Catholic Church L'Osservatore Romano, The Roman Observer published by The Vatican. So as you sense, it was a very different world, an entirely spiritual world. Now there were also convents, of course, where nuns lived and slept and worshiped. Here we see the very large convent at Fontevraud in Loire Valley in France. In this church Richard the Lionheart and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine are buried. This is no longer actually a functioning church. Here you see the cloister. It's a cultural center for the region of Tours, France. But it was huge in its day. That nonetheless gives you a sense of the size of this content here. All of these nuns sleeping in this same room. Perhaps the most famous nun of the middle ages, and the most famous female creator of Gregorian chant, was Hildegard of Bingen, who lived in Germany on the banks of the Rhine River during the 12th century. To meet Hildegard, let's go back to the classroom and reconnect with that strange looking Benedictine monk. One spiritual leader within the community of Benedictine convents was Hildegard of Bingen. Hildegard lived in the 12th century. She came from the area of Bingen on the west bank of the Rhine river in Germany. She grew up in a Benedictine convent. Here is the ruins of that Benedictine convent and then she went on ultimately to found her own convent and these are the ruins, or a 17th century drawing of that convent which is now also in ruins. Hildegard was a polymath. She could do many things. She wrote on church administration, on botany, on pharmacology, on medicine and on music. Indeed, because of this diversity, we can, I think, fairly say that the first renaissance man, in actuality was a medieval woman. Hildegard of Bingen. Popes and Bishops sought her advice, in part because she was a visionary. She had visions associated with the Christian story. Hildegard also wrote Gregorian chant. So, let's look at some slides of Hildegard, she was famous in her day. Here we have a manuscript put together in northern Italy about 20 years after her death with the representation of Hildegard up there on the top left. Next slide takes us to a blow up of this and we see the representation of Hildegard having a celestial vision. That's why the wavy lines going up from her head. She's receiving the Holy Spirit. She is copying down what she perceives, not on a notebook computer, but on a wax tablet with a large stylus in her right hand. Her assistant, the one male allowed in this community for the sacraments, her assistant, Volmar, peeks in astonished at what he is seeing.
