A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

st disibod and the history of the disibodenberg 41
Hildegard’s vita of St Disibod has been read and copied since the Middle
Ages and has been embellished multiple times (even the Acta Sanctorum
refers to childish and gossipy additions), such that a tangled mass
of ostensible information—and its associated interpretations—has surrounded
the historical Disibod until the present.
Büttner sought “to cut away the entwined wreath of legend to reveal
as purely as possible the historical kernel underneath.”14 He saw in the
Vita sancti Disibodi episcopi both the “expression” of the imaginings of a
learned woman from the 12th century and also (as in the concise narrative
comments on the charters) a “recording of the living folk narratives about
the old history of the Disibodenberg,”15 which he further describes as a
“refijined form of the folk tradition, in which the most luxuriant tendrils of
the poetic folk legend were plucked.”16 This may have some basis in the
fact that Hildegard objected vehemently to foolish legends and rationales
about the fate of the monastery, such as those that circulated among the
common people.17
In more recent times, the “symbolic content of the vita,”18 as well as
its historical value,19 has received emphasis. Haverkamp, for example,
describes the Vita sancti Disibodi episcopi as presenting “diffferentiating
historical views,” “history that appears realistic,” and a “deeply-anchored
historical consciousness.”20
Hildegard’s disclosures will therefore be discussed in more detail here,
if for no other reason than to enable a comparison between her text and
the history as it is designated by later authors—from Trithemius (around
1500) to Franz Xaver Remling (1836) and Heinrich Büttner (1934) and up
to the present (at least up to Fell [1999])—and also to distinguish between
sources and interpretations.
14 Büttner, SMBO, p. 7, “den geschichtlichen Kern aus dem um ihn gerankten Sagenkranz
möglichst rein herauszuschälen.”
15 Ibid., p. 10, “Fixierung der im Volke lebenden Erzählungen von der alten Geschichte
Disibodenbergs.”
16 Ibid., p. 11, “geläuterte Form der Volkstradition, bei der die üppigsten Ranken der
dichtenden Volkslegende abgeschnitten waren.”
17 V. Disib., AA.SS., p. 597; PL 197:1114–15; Two Hagiographies, pp. 56–57.
18 Alfred Haverkamp, “Hildegard von Disibodenberg-Bingen. Von der Peripherie zum
Zentrum,” in Umfeld, p. 19.
19 Eberhard J. Nikitsch, Kloster Disibodenberg. Religiosität, Kunst und Kultur im mittleren
Naheland (Regensburg, 1998), p. 15, “erstaunlich präzise” [astonishingly precise].
20 Haverkamp, “Hildegard von Disibodenberg-Bingen,” in Umfeld, pp. 15–69, at pp. 29–30,
“diffferenzierende historische Ansichten,” “realistisch erscheinende Geschichte,” “tief verankertes
historisches Bewusstsein.”