A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

hildegard of bingen and the hirsau reform 71
While there is no clear internal evidence as to the dating of the Speculum
virginum, it appears to have been written during the 1130s. It contains
no explicit allusions to the writing of Hugh of St Victor or Bernard
of Clairvaux, as if it were written before their writings had become widely
known.49 The claim of Trithemius that the Speculum virginum was composed
by a monk called Conrad who had been a disciple of William of
Hirsau is not implausible. His identifijication of its author with a monk
of Hirsau is indirectly supported by an early catalogue of its very impressive
library, which included the writings of Peregrinus. There is also
testimony from the early 16th century that the work and its author, identifijied
as Conrad, were given particular esteem at Hirsau itself. Trithemius
reports that Conrad was a prolifijic author, many of whose writings have
not survived.50 Nonetheless, his Accessus ad auctores and Dialogus de contemptu
et amore mundi demonstrate that he was an exceptionally erudite
monk, determined to establish a method for combining the positive moral
instruction available in pagan authors with a spirit of detachment from
the world. The extensive and frequently vivid dialogue that he assigns to
Theodora in the Speculum virginum suggests that he may well have had
experience in looking after a community of female recluses. The autograph
manuscript of the Speculum virginum belonged to the Cistercian
abbey of Eberbach, founded by Bernard of Clairvaux in 1136.51 Complaints
from the abbot of Hirsau in the late 1130s that some of his monks were
transferring their obedience to the Cistercians makes it possible that Conrad
was one of those monks who migrated from Hirsau or a dependent
community to the Cistercian order.52
While a number of early copies of the Speculum virginum survive in
Cistercian religious houses, an important early copy belonged to the
49 The major study on the Speculum is Matthäus Bernards, Speculum virginum. Geistigkeit
und Seelenleben der Frau im Hochmittalter, 2nd ed. (Cologne, 1982).
50 Trithemius, De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, in Opera historica, ed. Marquard Freher
(Frankfurt, 1601; reprint Frankfurt, 1996), 1:276–77. On the library catalogue and the testimony
of Parsimonius, second Protestant abbot of Hirsau, see Mews, “Virginity, Theology
and Pedagogy,” p. 18, and Felix Heinzer, “Buchkultur und Bibliotheksgeschichte Hirsaus,”
in Hirsau. St. Peter und Paul 1091–1991, pt. 2, pp. 259–96, esp. p. 264. This article is reprinted
in Felix Heinzer, Klosterreform und mittelalterliche Buchkultur im deutschen Südwesten
(Leiden, 2008), pp. 85–167.
51 Heinzer notes the previously undetected afffijinity of this manuscript (London, British
Library, Arundel 44, produced c.1140–1145), with those of Hirsau, “Buchkultur und Bibliotheksgeschichte
Hirsaus,” pp. 270–71; Klosterreform, pp. 108–11.
52 Württembergisches Urkundenbuch (Stuttgart, 1883; reprinted Aalen, 1974), 4:348,
no. XLIX.