A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

hildegard of bingen: a history of reception 299
between the visionary and scientifijic texts is to be seen in the as yet underresearched
“Berliner Fragment” (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer
Kulturbesitz, Ms. lat. qu. 674), which contains on fol. 103ra–va a portion
of the Cause that predates the oldest complete manuscript, that held by
Copenhagen. The “Fragment” was written by the same scribe who copied
the so-called Lucca-Codex (Lucca, Biblioteca Statale, Cod. 1942), an illuminated
copy of the Liber diu. written around 1220/1230. Both manuscripts
thus stand in a close context to the planned canonization proceedings.
The medical texts are also of great signifijicance in tracing the Hildegard’s
reception in the vernacular. An important record of the German reception
of the Physica appears in an herbal entitled the “Speyerer Kräuterbuch,”
currently in Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz,
Ms. germ. F. 817). The manuscript, which was copied in Speyer in 1456,
contains the Praefatio as well as a part of the Liber de herbis from the
Physica, translated into Middle High German. Manuscripts in Paris (Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, Cod. lat. 6952 [appendix]) and Augsburg
(Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. III, 1 f. 43) also include German translations
of the Physica. Both of these latter manuscripts were copied in the 15th
century. However, German technical terms also already appear in the oldest
extant textual witness to the Physica, Florentine Ms. 1942, supposedly
from c.1292.
Roswitha Wisniewski’s theory that Hildegard’s Liber simplicis medicinae
influenced medical descriptions in the Parzival by Wolfram of Eschenbach
(c.1170/1180–1220) has to be rejected. According to Wisniewski,
Wolfram took the episode about the carbuncle that grows beneath the
unicorn’s horn (Parzival, book 9, 482,24–483,4) from Hildegard’s Physica
(De animalibus, chapter 5). However, no connection between Wolfram
and Hildegard has been proven, either from direct citation or from the
appearance of Hildegard’s name in Wolfram’s work.
A less concrete connection appears in a statement by Richer of Sens
in his Chronica. Richer claims to have seen a medical text by Hildegard, a
Liber medicinalis ad diversas infijirmitates, while visiting Strasbourg in 1254;
however, he offfers no further description of this work. In 1292, Matthew
of Westminster mentions the Cause, calling it Liber compositae medicina
de aegritudines causis, signis et curis. Whether this refers to the volume
that Bruno, a canon at Strasbourg, produced at the Rupertsberg, a copy
of which is mentioned in the Acta canonisationis, remains unclear. Were
this the case, then the manuscript Matthew referred to (or a copy thereof)
could also be the missing prototype for the Strasbourg editio princeps,
published in 1533. Johannes Trithemius does not incorporate the scientifijic