"Listen: there was once a king sitting on his throne. Around him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns." – Hildegard von Bingen, letter (c. 1150)
FIELD NOTES – Dr. Eleanor Hartley LOCATION: The Scriptorium, Quarter of Justice SUBJECT: The Hours; the Listening Wall The oldest institution in the Cité is a timetable. On the first night, Hildegard von Bingen – who has been seeing what she calls the Living Light since she was three years old, and is not interested in discussing it – laid her hand on a wall stone that had been read aloud at the Gate an hour before and found it warm. By dawn she had organised the city into a choir. Seven times a day, at the canonical hours, the Scriptorium reads the city's stones aloud in order: Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline, and the night office for those who can stay awake. Each Hour covers a stretch of wall. Every stone in the Cité comes round once in the cycle. It is the Cité's first defence and still its most reliable, and it is called, simply, the Hours. The Scriptorium is a Romanesque abbey of rough red sandstone on the river, where the Quarter of Justice meets the Field....
From the lore of Cité des Dames.