A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

54 franz j. felten
charter.50 In particular, the “parish rights” are missing, which were fijirst
literally “added” to the copy of the late medieval cartulary.51 Thus, one
can no longer consider that the charter from 1128 offfers a fijirm foundation
on which to base the early history and legal position of the Disibodenberg
monastery, and it must be judged more carefully than even Büttner and
those who followed him have done.
Overall, we have to be far more conscious as to which sources and which
interpretations form the foundations for our apparently secure knowledge
about earlier periods. We only know about Disibod’s origins and activities
from Hildegard. It is only modern interpretation based on a general perception
of missionary activities that creates a center of missionary work
and pastoral care (about which Semmler has already expressed doubts)
from Hildegard’s presentation of a remote colony of hermits and a later
monastery. Similar interpretations have been applied to the creation of
Willigis’s foundation of canons. The sources cite only his piety and veneration
of Disibod as motivating factors. Strategic considerations are a modern
attribution, based certainly on the role that the Disibodenberg played
in the battles that occurred in the 13th century. If Willigis had intended
to create an “outpost” for the archdiocese of Mainz, then the valley of
the Oster River, with its borders touching Metz and Trier, would have
offfered a better strategic position than the much closer Disibodenberg.
That is, even if one ought to describe the early medieval diocesan and pastoral
organizations with this type of military terminology, Willigis’s most
famous foundations, St Stefan and St Victor outside the gates of Mainz,
cannot be explained in this fashion, nor do they need to be. Their initial
task, like that of all canonical houses, was to celebrate the liturgical hours
in prayer. Based on the episcopal foundations, the evidence is rather thin
to support an argument for a systematic-strategic organization of pastoral
care in the bishopric. The far-ranging assignment of churches and responsibilities
for clearing forested areas, which better fijit a later time period,
are attested only by a questionable passage from the Adalbert charter. In
general, the ownership of churches and tithes is not necessarily connected
with pastoral care, which is particularly evident with regard to women’s
50 This confijirmation is transmitted as a Vidimus in 1268 and copied in the cartulary
(MzUB 2, 108 [partial edition], Heinrich Beyer, Leopold Eltester, and Adam Goertz, eds.,
Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der jetzt die Preussischen Regierungsbezirke Coblenz und
Trier bildenden mittelrheinischen Territorien, vols. 1–3 (1860–1874, reprinted in Aalen, 1974),
p. 552.
51 Büttner, SMBO, pp. 28–29.