Jutta von Sponheim

Countess Jutta von Sponheim (22 December 1091 – 1136) was the youngest of four noblewomen who were born into affluent surroundings in what is currently the Rhineland-Palatinate.

Jutta, instead of entering the convent at an early age, became an "anchoress," a symbolic "anchor" for the world to God, and thus she closed herself for life in a one-room shelter, with only a small window through which food was passed in, and refused to be taken out.

She tutored several female pupils from wealthy families and they lived with her in her hermitage.

Jutta taught Hildegard to write; to read the collection of psalms used in the liturgy; and to chant the Opus Dei (‘work of God’), the weekly sequential recitation of the Canonical hours.

She wore a chain under her clothes, prayed barefoot in the extreme cold of a German winter, and refused the allowed (and even encouraged) modifications to the Benedictine diet for those who were sick.