A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

246 susanne ruge
The Benedictine Rule prescribes that texts be read aloud; in Villers, the
Vite mer. was read during meals, and in Gembloux this reading would
have been prior to compline. This serves as evidence that the Vite mer.
actually found its monastic audience, and also demonstrates the signifijicance
placed upon it by the monks from Gembloux and Villers. This
becomes especially clear when one considers that the Benedictine Rule
dictates that the table readings should be taken from texts by the Church
Fathers on the subject of monastic life.88
Another extant manuscript includes, in parts, the punctuation that
the Cistercians typically used for texts to be read aloud. From this fact
we can conclude that this manuscript was also used for reading within
a monastic environment.89 This manuscript had been owned by the Premonstratensian
monastery of St Maria in Rommersdorf near Neuwied.
The Benedictine monastery of St Jacob in Mainz owned another copy of
the Vite mer.90
Since the nuns of the Rupertsberg copied this text,91 one could assume
that they were also among the fijirst readers and hearers of the Vite mer.
Benedictines, Cistercians, Premonstratensians. These were the circles
in which the Vite mer. was read, and if one believes another of Guibert’s
statements, it was actually used by some readers as an inducement for
self-examination: “That, which was said in this book, was given to you by
God for the correction of readers and listeners.”92
The Narrative Psychology of the Vite mer.
Over the course of this article it has been demonstrated that the structure
of the Vite mer. is uniformly directed towards penance in spite of its
various textual elements. Moreover, members of monastic communities
nobis transmissum, debite uenerationis afffectu suscepimus, summa ammiratione dignum
ducimus, cuius mirifijica doctrina et Villarenses primo ad mensam suam optime saginati
sunt, et nos modo ad lectionem collationum delectabiliter potamur.”
88 On reading at meal times, see The Rule of St. Benedict, 38, pp. 236–38.
89 The manuscript is presently in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (ÖNB),
Codex 1016 (theol. 382), see Vite mer., p. LIV.
90 Michael Embach, Die Schriften Hildegards von Bingen. Studien zu ihrer Überlieferung
und Rezeption im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin, 2003), pp. 146–47.
91 See Guibert’s letter above, cited in note 87.
92 Guibert of Gembloux, Epistolae, 21, p. 247, “que in eodem libro dicta sunt, ad correctionem
legentium uel audientium benigna tibi pietate inspirauit.” See Walburga Storch,
OSB, Hildegard von Bingen, Im Feuer der Taube. Die Briefe (Augsburg, 1997), p. 232, and Vite
mer., p. XIII.