A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

st disibod and the history of the disibodenberg 47
to 843 and particularly afffected the areas on the western side of the Rhine.
The great feuds that occurred around the year 900 and in the following
decades caused even more sufffering, in particular to the churches and
monasteries.
It is in this sense that one can consider Hildegard’s presentation of
these themes as “the author’s deeply-anchored, historical consciousness,”
a “sense for multiple determining factors, courses of events, and motifs.”30
Those whom Hildegard did not mention are just as notable: aside from
Boniface, Charlemagne, and Liuthard, Hildegard does not name any of the
other active participants by name, neither the “evil” bishop of Mainz, who
despoiled the Disibodenberg, nor the “good” archbishops, who established
canons and monks, respectively, on the mountain. Hildegard’s reticence
with names (on the mountain, Hatto II was considered to be one of the
guilty parties)31 should not be understood as clemency. She pilloried the
archbishop as the primary guilty party and has Willigis lament that he has
become wealthy and powerful due to the unjust alienation of the monastery’s
lands. Yet it should also be noted that Hildegard, a staunch Benedictine,
does not imply that Willigis would/should have settled Benedictines
on the site, nor does she criticize the canons in any way, even though she
naturally welcomes Ruthard’s selection of brothers from her own order to
succeed them.32
The Charters from 1108 and 1128: From Archbishops Ruthard and Adalbert
In contrast to the Vita Disibodi, Ruthard’s 1108 charter,33 which was initially
transmitted in a Vidimus written in 1268 (and thus after the takeover
of the monastery by the Cistercians), begins with the reform of the lax life
that the canons had practiced and which Ruthard, inspired by the veneration
of the saint and the fama of the monastic life that had once ruled
here, replaced again with the stricter and better life of monks. This conforms
to classic monastic rhetoric of reform that was current at that time.
Yet even Ruthard did not claim that Willigis had actually wanted to settle
monks on the mountain, even if a note of regret found in the wording
30 Haverkamp, “Hildegard von Disibodenberg-Bingen,” in Umfeld, pp. 29–30. “ein tief
verankertes historisches Bewusstsein der Autorin,” “Sinn für vielfältige Rahmenbedingungen,
Ereignisabläufe und Handlungsmotive.”
31 Annales Sancti Disibodi a. 975, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS 7:6.
32 V. Disib., AA.SS., p. 597; PL 197:1114; Two Hagiographies, pp. 152–53.
33 MzUB, 436.