A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

hildegard as musical hagiographer 201
Like all hagiographers, Hildegard celebrated the saints not only for
their individual acts and signifijicance but also according to their broader
roles as apostles, confessors, virgins, and the like. Her rich imagery combines
biblical language and natural metaphors—steep mountain heights,
dazzling white lilies, the branching tree, and, her favorite, the verdure or
life-giving power (viriditas) of God—to illustrate and elucidate the diffferent
classes of saints.19 Indeed, Hildegard’s earliest songs seem to be those
for the various categories of saints found in the fijinal vision of Scivias, such
as O vos imitatores for confessors and O cohors militiae floris for apostles.
In the later notated manuscripts, her songs are organized according to
these categories (not by a calendrical ordering of feasts), with her songs
for specifijic saints within each category joined to her generic songs for that
group. The groups are ranked according to the hierarchy of sanctity found
also in the litany: fijirst, God and the Trinity, and then the Virgin Mary,
Angels, Prophets and Patriarchs, Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors, Virgins,
and Widows.
Sts Disibod and Rupert were, of course, confessors. Engelberg 103 offfers
a glimpse of how they may have been commemorated in regional monasteries
in Hildegard’s day. In Engelberg 103, both saints appear in the litany
of confessors; only Disibod, however, receives specifijic material elsewhere.
Even then, his liturgy on July 8 draws heavily from the Common of Confessors.
None of the four identifijied chants is unique to his story; the only
fully notated antiphon has a generic text appropriate for all confessors:
“Famous confessor of God, intercede diligently for us your servants before
your Lord.”20 If this is representative of what was sung at the Disibodenberg
in the 1150s, no wonder Abbot Kuno commissioned Hildegard to contribute
a “revelation” about St Disibod!
Hildegard’s Disibod songs commemorate the saint in his role as hermit,
preacher, and monastic founder and patron. In her reply to Abbot
Kuno, the song texts read like one long train of praise for the hidden fijigure
(absconsa forma) who towers both on the mountaintop of his vineyard—
the monastery on the Disibodenberg—and in the true city above, the
celestial Jerusalem. The initial verses, identifijied in the song collections
19 Hildegard’s poetic treatment of the saints is discussed by Peter Walter, “Die Heiligen
in der Dichtung der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen,” in Hildegard von Bingen, 1179–1979:
Festschrift zum 800. Todestag der Heiligen, ed. Anton Brück (Mainz, 1979), pp. 211–37.
20 Engelberg 103, fol. 139r: Egregie confessor Dei pro nobis famulis tuis coram Domino tuo
sedulus intercede.