A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

202 leigh-choate, flynn, and fassler
as the antiphon O mirum admirandum, set forth in an abstract manner
the pervasive dichotomies of hiddenness, humility, and exile, and height,
honor, and liturgical community. The succeeding verses, and the corresponding
responsory O viriditas digiti Dei, allude to Disibod’s establishment
of a religious community (plantatio), an appropriate subject for
matins, when the responsory would have accompanied the day’s narrative
lessons. These readings were likely selected from the commune sanctorum
until Hildegard’s vita of the saint became available. The fijinal verses of
song text, and the corresponding sequence O presul vere civitatis for Mass,
highlight the exile of the saint and his servants, those singing his praises.
Their self-reflective exegesis of Disibod’s role in the celestial city and the
performance of the liturgy in his church on earth echo Hildegard’s other
sequences, including that for St Rupert, O Ierusalem.
If Hildegard’s songs for Disibod prioritize his identity as a confessor,
their placement in the earliest notated collection obscures this categorization.
In Dendermonde, Hildegard’s three songs for the saint appear
not with those for St Rupert and confessors, but with those for St John
the Evangelist and apostles (fols 162r–63r). Scholars have puzzled over
this unconventional placement, generally positing that Hildegard simply
wanted to give special emphasis to a local saint who had, after all,
evangelized the Rhineland as an exiled Irish bishop—an apostolic man
(apostolicus vir).21 Even while suggesting this, van Poucke offfers “no valid
explanation” and “no reason” for the disparity between the Disibod and
Rupert songs in this source, believed to have been compiled for the monks
of Villers under Hildegard’s own direction.22
Perhaps a closer look at Hildegard’s Disibod songs, specifijically the
responsory O viriditas digiti Dei, will shed further light on the issue.
Example 1 outlines O viriditas as visionary text (as in her letter) and as
notated liturgical song (according to the Dendermonde and Riesenkodex
manuscripts).
21 E.g. Symph. (Eng.), p. 58, and Peter van Poucke, ed., Hildegard of Bingen: Symphonia
harmoniae caelestium revelationum: Dendermonde, St.-Pieters & Paulusabdij, Ms. Cod. 9
(Peer, 1991), p. 7.
22 van Poucke, ed., Symphonia: Dendermonde, p. 7.