A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

50 franz j. felten
monastery has consistently been interpreted? Would this obviously old
complex of possessions in the Ostertal, some 20 miles farther to the west,38
not indeed have offfered a better opportunity to strengthen the position of
Mainz against Trier and Metz in this border region?
The image of the archbishop as a strategic colonizer and organizer of
pastoral care has been deduced from the following section of the charter:
Because the tithe on fallow lands was available to him (a wording that
specifijically evokes a corresponding emphasis of the archiepiscopal rights
in the Adalbert charters),39 he ordered that three churches be founded “in
that same forested area” (the referent for eodem saltu is missing), that is, the
churches in Bollenbach, Hundsbach, and Meckenbach. He then granted to
St Disibod all of the cultivated land, as well as the land which was not yet
under cultivation but was associated with these churches. Also, because
he held no possessions in the Soonwald, he obtained a hide of land from
a cleric, where he then founded a church (Getzbach), awarded the entire
tithe (again made up of cultivated land and land awaiting settlers) to this
church, and then donated the entire setup to St Disibod. Moreover, he
fijinally (postmodum autem) obtained a small parcel, made up of a hide
from St Alban, in order to build a church in Seesbach because, due to the
size of the region, not all of the inhabitants of the villages that had been
constructed there could attend Mass in Getzbach. This Seesbach church
was assigned to the authority of the church in Getzbach; more exactly
(because it was “useful” as a legal title over the centuries under changing
circumstances), the Seesbach church was assigned to the cleric (not the
canon), who was serving as the priest in Getzbach.40 Do these actions
reflect strategic planning or the aggregation of a longer phase of development?
Before coming to sweeping conclusions about pastoral responsibilities,
one should consider that the possession of churches and tithes
was not necessarily linked to pastoral activities, but rather initially served
as a source of revenue.
This series of grants is followed, with little transition (eodem etiam in
tempore), by the donation of Salian land (strikingly exactly determined)
and two hides of land in Boos that were occupied by farmers, donated by
38 Karl Heinemeyer, Das Erzbistum Mainz in römischer und fränkischer Zeit 1: Die
Anfänge der Diözese Mainz, Veröfffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Hessen
34 (Marburg, 1979), pp. 103–20.
39 See, for example, MzUB, 540 and 558.
40 Ibid., 553: “basilicam in ea construxit et dedicavit, nomen ei Semendisbach imponens
ipsamque cum suis appendiciis Gehinkirche ecclesie subdens, ab eodem clerico, qui
illam rexerit, hanc semper regendam constituit.”