A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

38 franz j. felten
of the right of burial. She secured the legal protection of her foundation
a few years later through an imperial privilege119—untroubled by the fact
that Barbarossa was excommunicate due to the schism, and that the Cistercians
from nearby Eberbach had fled from the emperor into exile.
Around the end of her life, Hildegard became involved in a harsh conflict
with the cathedral chapter over burial rights. Fearless as ever, Hildegard
advocated for the legal position of her monastery.120 Similarly, she
was able, with the help of the curia, to gain a decision favoring her in a
quarrel with Disibodenberg over the appointment of a provost, and thus
to prepare for her conclusive liberation from Disibodenberg, even though
she never succeeded in her lifetime (d. 1179) in attaining the right from
the archbishop for her convent to elect the provost.121 Even in 1208, it was
the abbot of Disibodenberg who settled a quarrel over the provost (on the
instructions of the bishop); however, in 1224, Archbishop Siegfried placed
the nuns under the monastery of Sponheim.122
From modest beginnings on a mountain between the Glan and the Nahe
there grew a flourishing monastery with full legal rights, which provided
the best conditions for the far-reaching work and mission of its visionary
founder, and which was no longer afffected by the disturbances that
troubled Disibodenberg in the 13th century. As an episcopal foundation,
Rupertsberg—unlike its mother monastery, which had come under the
domination of the Palatine in the late Middle Ages—escaped dissolution
during the Reformation and, after its destruction by the Swedes in 1632,
continued to live on in Eibingen until its closing during the secularization
at the beginning of the 19th century. Rebuilt not far from its old location
in the early 20th century, the Abbey of St Hildegard in Eibingen continues
in the spirit of its medieval traditions and contributes to their philological
and historical study.
Klosterpolitik der Mainzer Erzbischöfe von Adalbert I. bis Heinrich I. (1100–1153),” Archiv
für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte 8 (1956): 21–75.
119 MzUB 2, 274; MGH Diplomata Friedrich, D 398.
120 Epistolae, I, 23, pp. 61–66, and 24, pp. 66–68, regarding which, see Wolfgang Felix
Schmitt, “Charisma gegen Recht? Der Konflikt der Hildegard von Bingen mit dem Mainzer
Domkapitel 1178/79 in kirchenrechtlicher Perspektive,” Binger Geschichtsblätter 20 (1998):
124–59.
121 MzUB 2, 505, from 1187.
122 Wolfgang Seibrich, “Geschichte des Klosters Disibodenberg,” in Hildegard von Bingen
1179–1979. Festschrift zum 800. Todestag der Heiligen, Quellen und Abhandlungen zur
mittelrheinischen Kirchengeschichte 33 (Mainz, 1979), pp. 55–75, following Trithemius.