A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

hildegard of bingen: a history of reception 303
morals. It is not for nothing that the title page included the addendum,
“Ad confijirmandam et stabiliendam catholicam nostram fijidem & religionem
christianam, moresque in Ecclesia instruendos & emandandos.”
The Riesenkodex once again served as the basis for the print edition of
this epistolary volume: Justus Blanckwald had copied the texts with his
own hand at the Rupertsberg.
Blanckwald’s epistolary volume also exerted a long history of influence.
It was included in the great compendia of patristic and medieval authors
that appeared in the 16th and 17th centuries, and which fijinally elevated
Hildegard to a Church authority par excellence. Commonly appearing
under the influence of the Council of Trent, these collections aimed to
disseminate the fundamental writings of the Catholic tradition in a milieu
of polemic-apologetic self-assurance. The center of this great offfensive in
the publication wars was Paris, where Margarinus de La Bigne (c.1546–
1597) attacked an edition of the Orthodoxographa, which had been mostly
cleansed of “heretical” material. Margarinus’s own Sacra Bibliotheca sanctorum
Patrum (Paris, 1575, Appendix 1579), containing around 200 authors,
carried with it the explicit desire to refute the so-called Magdeburger Zenturionen
(1559) by Matthias Flacius Illyricus. Margarinus’s originally purely
patristic collection was continuously expanded and soon included authors
from the medieval period who had a reputation of unwavering orthodoxy
and were considered prototypical Catholics. Thus, volume 15 (pp. 612–88)
of the Bibliotheca magna patrum (printed 1597–1627) included Hildegard’s
letters, according to Blanckwald’s edition, as well as other works by the
visionary. These include a short Hildegard Vita by Johannes Trithemius,
the Solutiones triginta octo quaestionum, the De regulae Sancti Benedicti,
the Explanatio Symboli Sancti Athanasii, and the Vita Hildegardis. The Vita
Ruperti appears only as a fragment, which breaks offf abruptly.
In 1707, Thomas Ittig indicated in his treatise De Bibliothecis et Catenis
Patrum (p. 471) that the supplemental volume including the Hildegardian
materials could be traced back to the Cologne theologian Alardus Wyelius,
as well as Andreas Schott (1552–1629), a Jesuit. They are credited with
raising Hildegard to the rank of a patristic authority.
In 1677, the expanded Maxima Bibliotheca Patrum et antiquorum Scriptorum
ecclesiasticorum (vol. 23, pp. 537–600) appeared, including twice
as many pages devoted to Hildegard, which again used Blanckwald’s edition
as the primary source for Hildegard (however, the Vita Hildegardis
is not included). The publication in 1724 of the Veterum Scriptorum amplissima
Collectio (Paris, 1724) by Edmond Martène (1654–1759) and Ursin
Durand (d. 1773) brought about another increase in the printed holdings