A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

46 franz j. felten
fortunes of the brethren were repudiated as mere fables. As in the texts
of her visions, Hildegard assured her readers at the end that “these words
were brought forth by true Wisdom. . . . As I have seen and heard everything,
so I have begun and completed the writing.”29
It is notable how Hildegard described the early history, which was obviously
also completely unknown to the inhabitants of the Disibodenberg,
managing to “fijill in” the years from the late 6th century to the 9th (even
if not without commonplaces, repetitions, and occasional contradictions).
The flowering of the monastery is ascribed to the qualities of the saint and
his companions and to later monks, as recognized by the local populace,
and not to patronage by kings or bishops. In contrast, the monastery’s
decline is attributed primarily to a laxity in religious fervor on the part
of the brethren and the laity, and only afterwards to the warlike conflicts
and encroachments by the wealthy on the monastery’s lands. Normans
and Hungarians are absent from the narrative; battles by “tyrants”—that
is, internal conflicts—dominate the pages.
The accusations presented by the nobles about the wealth belonging
to the monks invoked a conflict that had already lasted centuries:
Charles Martel notoriously confijiscated extensive properties belonging to
churches and monasteries (to the detriment of his soul, at least according
to a massive propaganda campaign waged by the Church beginning in the
9th century). The extant documents also demonstrate that the intended
restitution offfered by Martel’s sons, and to which they had agreed only
at Boniface’s insistence, was delayed due to “necessities of the kingdom.”
Charlemagne dismantled the monopoly on power held by the bishop of
Trier. In 811, as part of a more general move in support of the monasteries,
he posed critical questions to the abbots about the accrual of their
properties. Discussions and actual conflicts between clerical and worldly
powers about the lands belonging to the Church and the monasteries
intensifijied beginning in the 840s, reaching a high point in the accusations
made around 900. The number of monasteries that sufffered great
losses, or indeed perished, during the 9th and 10th centuries is quite large.
Those afffected could easily consider the battles between Louis the Pious
and his sons to be “battles between tyrants.” The same could be said about
the conflicts between Lothar I and his brothers, which took place prior
29 V. Disib., “Verba itaque haec vera sapientia protulit: ego autem paupercula, in lecto
aegritudinis meae jacendo, et scribere coepi et fijinivi.” AA.SS., p. 597; PL 197:1116. Two
Hagiographies, pp. 156–57.