A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

hildegard as musical hagiographer 199
Of the regional monasteries that might have fostered the cult of St Disibod
as deliberately as in Engelberg 103, the abbey in Sponheim, situated
across the Nahe River from the Disibodenberg, stands out. Its church was
dedicated to Sts Martin and Mary; its founding as a Benedictine monastery
in 1124 was supported by donations made before the altar of St Martin
in the preexisting church of Sponheim. The donors included Count Meinhard
and his wife, Mechthild, of Sponheim, brother and sister-in-law of
Jutta, Hildegard’s magistra on the Disibodenberg. Abbot Adelhun of the
Disibodenberg witnessed the occasion.10 Fewer than 20 kilometers separated
the two abbeys, and both were stafffed by monks from the larger
monasteries of Mainz and were influenced by the Hirsau reforms.11 The
abbot and the entire community of Sponheim attended the opening of the
ancient sepulcher of St Disibod on April 1, 1138.12
Whether from Sponheim or not, the liturgy preserved in Engelberg 103
certainly reflects the surrounding area and may be viewed as representative
of the liturgies celebrated in regional Benedictine monasteries at the
end of the 12th century. As such, the manuscript indeed offfers a context
for understanding Hildegard’s liturgical thought and works. This context,
however, must be applied with caution and caveat, for the geographical
and temporal correspondence is not exact.
Singing St Disibod, Confessor—and Apostle?
St Disibod found a place not only in Engelberg 103 (and the liturgy it
represents) but also in Hildegard’s own works. Indeed, the sibyl of the
Rhine composed fijive songs and a vita in honor of her early patron. Her
only other vita was for St Rupert, another saint local to the Mainz- Bingen
region and patron of her own convent, for whom she composed four
10 Mainzer Urkundenbuch, ed. Manfred Stimming, vol. 1 (1932; repr., Darmstadt, 1972),
pp. 427–28.
11 On Hirsau-influenced monasticism in and around Mainz, see Franz Staab, “Reform und
Reformgruppen im Erzbistum Mainz. Vom ‘Libellus de Willigisi consuetudinibus’ zur ‘Vita
domnae Juttae inclusae,’” in Reformidee und Reformpolitik im spätsalisch- frühstaufijischen
Reich: Vorträge zur Tagung der Gesellschaft für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte vom 11.
bis 13. September 1991 in Trier, eds. Stefan Weinfurtner and Hubertus Seibert (Mainz, 1992),
pp. 119–87, esp. 147–66. Felix Heinzer identifijied Engelberg 103 as a manuscript reflecting
Hirsau liturgical traditions (evident in the Rheinau ordinary) in “Der Hirsauer Liber Ordinarius,”
Revue Bénédictine 102 (1992): 309–47, esp. 343–44 (where Engelberg 103 is Hesbert’s
manuscript 674). See Constant J. Mews’s essay in this volume, pp. 57–83.
12 Anna Silvas, Jutta and Hildegard: The Biographical Sources, Brepols Medieval Women
Series 1 (University Park, Pa., 1998), p. 25.