A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

52 franz j. felten
for the latter fact would be that Ruthard authorized the grants (which are
missing from his own charter) in the few months remaining between May
8, 1108, and his death on May 2, 1109, without documenting these actions
in a charter. Another, more likely scenario, as the legal transactions were
described in great detail in 1128, is that the corresponding documents have
been lost. However, it is also highly possible, as the possessions listed are
also sometimes missing from the Papal confijirmation in 1148,44 that these
were entered later in the “copy.” It was also to the monastery’s advantage
that the limitations applied to the grant of a tithe from the episcopal
court at Albansberg (and which Adalbert had determined the previous
year in his original, extant confijirmation)45 are missing from the copied
document. This lacuna also appears in the Ruthard charter, which was
likewise initially copied in the later Middle Ages, and thus also subject to
later emendations.
A few well-detailed donations by laymen as well as two purchases conclude
the 1128 confijirmation of possessions. Of particular note is the grant,
rather complex in its grammar as well as its content, offfered by Count
Megenhard of Sponheim to celebrate the entry of his sister Jutta into religious
life at the Disibodenberg. While the transfer of the villa Nunkirchen46
with all of its appurtenances is beyond doubt, the accompanying statements
about the freedom of the church are not. It is also notable that the
confijirmation of a grant in Bingen ignores the division of goods, which
Archbishop Adalbert had already decreed in 1124, when the canons of St
Martin had laid claim to them.47
The charter of 1128 accords with Ruthard’s document in that it determines
that the canons were duly compensated. In addition, the later charter
informs that Adalbert honored Abbot Burkhard (not the monastery) for
his service to St Disibod, such that Adalbert designated Burkhard to be the
saint’s cooperator in sermons, baptisms, burials, and confessions; indeed,
Burkhard was the saint’s representative (omnino omnimodam vicem suam
suppleret). Based on this most unusually worded sentence (which has no
corresponding reference in the Ruthard charter), Fell argues for a “pastoral
monastery” that had supposedly “fallen away from the usual scope of
a Benedictine abbey.”48 In fact, Adalbert granted pastoral rights to several
44 MzUB 2, 108.
45 MzUB, 542.
46 A deserted village near Bockenau, not Kaiserslautern; compare with MzUB 2, 108.
47 MzUB, 523.
48 Fell, “Disibodenberg,” p. 129.