A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

hildegard as musical hagiographer 209
Table 2. Hildegard’s sequences
Song number 33 Incipit Feast(s) or Subject(s)
20 O virga ac diadema Blessed Virgin Mary
28 O ignis spiritus paracliti Pentecost
45 O presul vere civitatis Disibod
49 O Ierusalem Rupert (and Dedication?)
50 Mathias sanctus Mathias
53 O Euchari in leta vita Eucharius
54 Columba aspexit Maximin
64 O Ecclesia Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins
fijigures converse with her about events and people in Cologne during the
time of the martyrdom.34 Hildegard and Elisabeth corresponded, and their
letters offfer mutual condolences for the difffijiculties of having visions and
feeling the need to express them to others.35 Like Elisabeth, Hildegard was
an apologist for new understandings of Ursula’s cult; her sequence, discussed
here, portrays the virgin-martyr as a model of the Church, joined to Christ
in the blood of sacrifijice, and her antiphons, discussed below, introduce the
monks and other men who joined the virgins’ band as protectors.
Hildegard wrote eight sequences, which are through-composed, strophic
chants designed to be sung before the intoning of the Gospel in the Mass
liturgy.36 (See Table 2.) Indeed, the sequence is the only category of Mass
chant for which she composed multiple pieces. Hildegard may have composed
the sequences for the Virgin, Ursula, and Rupert for her own community
on the Rupertsberg. The sequence O Ierusalem, for Rupert, may
have been written for the dedication of the new church on May 1, 1151/1152,
33 According to Newman, ed. Symph.; ed. and trans. Symph. (Eng.)
34 For Elisabeth of Schönau’s Ursula visions, see “Liber revelationum Elisabeth de sacro
exercitu virginum Coloniensium,” in Die Visionen der hl. Elisabeth und die Schriften der
Aebte Ekbert und Emecho von Schönau, ed. F. W. E. Roth (Brünn, 1884), pp. 123–38, and the
English translation by Anne L. Clark, “The Book of Revelations about the Sacred Company
of the Virgins of Cologne,” in Elisabeth of Schönau: The Complete Works (New York, 2000),
pp. 213–33.
35 See Felix Heinzer’s essay in this volume, “Unequal Twins: Visionary Attitude and
Monastic Culture in Elisabeth of Schönau and Hildegard of Bingen,” pp. 85–108, on the
diffferences between Elisabeth’s and Hildegard’s visions.
36 Hildegard’s sequences are treated as a group in Pfau and Morent, Klang des Himmels,
pp. 202–13. A number of studies of individual works exist, including that of O Ierusalem
by Michael Klaper in the introduction to the Riesenkodex facsimile, Hildegard von
Bingen, Lieder: Faksimile: Riesencodex (Hs. 2) der Hessischen Landesbibliothek Wiesbaden,
fol. 466–481v, ed. Lorenz Welker and Michael Klaper (Wiesbaden, 1998), pp. 9–10, 29–30.