Musicology Colloquium: “Assessing the Dendermonde Codex: Hildegard of Bingen’s response to Guibert of Gembloux”

Guibert of Gembloux would become Hildegard of Bingen’s final secretary (after Volmar †1173 and Godfrey of Disibodenberg †1176), and one of the authors of her Vita, but during the two-year period from 1175-1177, he was one of her most demanding and persistent correspondents. Towards the end of their epistolary exchange, Hildegard unexpectedly sent him a collection known today as the Dendermonde Codex, formerly housed at the St. Peter and Paul Abbey, and now at the Maurits Sabbe library (KU Leuven). Well-known to musicologists and performers of Hildegard’s music, Dendermonde is one of two main manuscripts that transmit her musical repertory. While its music section has been available in facsimile edition since 1991 (van Poucke), the music is only one part of the compilation manuscript (described as a miscellany in the KU Leuven catalogue); it also transmits Hildegard’s least studied of her three visionary texts—the Liber Vitae Meritorum, visionary works of Elisabeth of Schönau, and an anonymous dialogue between a priest and the devil. In this paper, Jennifer Bain will present a codicological and comparative manuscript analysis that will correct a fundamental error in the literature in how the content of the manuscript is described and challenge repeated assumptions about the so-called incomplete status of the music section. Through a review of the relationships amongst the items in this collection, alongside an examination of the correspondence between Guibert and Hildegard, she will consider the purpose of the manuscript as a whole.