A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

hearing the heavenly symphony 175
other women disciples) was often considered to be a precursor of women
monastics.45
Hildegard seems to have produced most of her songs for specifijic saints
after moving to the Rupertsberg around 1148. The move itself would have
created the need for songs honoring St Rupert. Hildegard’s dedication
chants were likely composed for the rededication of the Rupertsberg
church on 1 May 1151/1152.46 Although its patron was Rupert, its dedication
was to the Virgin, so the nine song texts honoring Mary in Letter 192
(dated by Van Acker before 1153) may also have arisen from an ambitious
dedicatory program.
Other songs honoring specifijic saints reflect Hildegard’s ties to other
monasteries. She included three songs for St Disibod in Letter 74r (dated
by Van Acker before 1155), responding to her abbot’s request for revelations
concerning the saint. Hildegard may have written them at this time
or during her earlier residence on Disibod’s mount.47 Hildegard’s visit to
Trier in 1160 may have prompted some or all of the chants for the saints
venerated there (Eucharius, Matthias, and Maximin), although she was in
friendly association with the monastery of Sts Eucharius and Matthias as
early as 1148. The two songs dedicated to St John the Evangelist may have
been inspired by the authorizing vision in 1163 that led to Hildegard’s last
great work, the Liber diuinorum operum. The prologue to John’s Gospel
and the Apocalypse (then attributed to John) became central texts for
this work, and the songs share much of their language and imagery with
the Biblical texts. Although we lack a full record of the relics held at the
Rupertsberg during her life, Hildegard’s large repertory for the Ursuline
martyrs could be due to the acquisition of a relic from the named martyr
St Saturia; the convent most likely obtained the relic between 1167 and
1173, after Philip of Heinsberg became archbishop of Cologne and visited
the Rupertsberg.48
45 Abelard provided a full treatment of this theme in Letter 7, “On the origin of nuns,”
ed. J.T. Muckle in “The Letter of Heloise on Religious Life and Abelard’s First Reply,” Medieval
Studies 17 (1955): 240–81.
46 Citing arguments that the dedication of 1152 was only that of a newly restored chapel,
Hugh Feiss suggests in Two Hagiographies, p. 22, that the Rupert songs, in particular
the sequence O Ierusalem, may have been composed closer to 1170, by which time a new
monastery church could have been built and dedicated.
47 John Van Engen, “Letters and the Public Persona of Hildegard,” in Umfeld, pp. 375–
418, at 389, argues for an origin at the Disibodenberg.
48 Saturia was spelled Satyria in the only document identifying her relics at the Rupertsberg.
The argument for dating the presence of her relics to the Rupertsberg is circumstantial
but suggestive; see William T. Flynn, “Veiled with Variety”: Hildegard of Bingen’s Offfijice