A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

60 constant j. mews
Hildegard was raised. The chronicler then identifijies various writings of
St Anselm, including a letter he sent to William of Hirsau (1026–1091).11
While the letter to William was not important in itself, the fact that the
chronicler singled it out from St Anselm’s correspondence discloses a conscious
efffort to link two key monastic fijigures of the 11th century, both of
whom were given particular esteem at Disibodenberg.
William had been raised since boyhood at the ancient abbey of St
Emmeram, in Regensburg, in a form of monasticism that extended back
to the time of Charlemagne.12 Elected abbot of Hirsau in 1069, William
became increasingly involved in the cause of moving monasticism away
from excessive secular control and in supporting the cause of Gregory VII
(1073–1085) against Henry IV, whom Gregory excommunicated in 1075. As
Jestice observes, William was much more outspoken than the abbots of
Cluny in his attitude towards reform.13 In a letter sent to William around
1080, introducing the customs of Cluny, Ulrich of Zell praised him for having
avoided the practice, widespread in Germany, of families sending children
who were deformed, deaf, blind, or leprous into monastic life, not for
the sake of God but to free themselves of responsibility for them. Recognizing
that William himself had been brought up as a child oblate, Ulrich
optimistically considered that William had eliminated a practice that he
considered to be destructive to monasticism: “I am certain that you have
completely extirpated that root from its foundation, from which alone all
monasteries have been destroyed of those that have collapsed either in
German or Romance speaking regions.”14 Ulrich’s optimism was clearly
exaggerated. Only two decades later, Hildegard’s parents would follow a
conventional path in offfering their 10th child to religious life when she
was just seven years old. Hildegard herself would continue to warn against
this practice of child oblation, if it meant children were not making a
free choice: “Let people who want to subject their children to that Pas-
11 Annales Sancti Disibodi, MGH SS 17:12, referring to Anselm, Ep. 358, Anselmi Opera
Omnia, ed. Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, 6 vols., vol. 5 (Edinburgh, 1946–1966), p. 299; Silvas,
Jutta and Hildegard, p. 12.
12 See Haimo, Vita Willihelmi abbatis Hirsaugiensis, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach, MGH SS
12:209–25.
13 See Jestice, Wayward Monks, pp. 210–17, 251–52.
14 Ulrich of Zell, Epistola nuncupatoria, Antiquiores consuetudines Cluniacensis monasterii,
PL 149:637B (Paris, 1853): “Ego autem certum sum illam te radicem funditus exstirpasse,
ex qua sola praecipue omnia sunt monasteria destructa quae destructa sunt vel in
Theutonica, vel in Romana lingua.”