The book of letters of Hildegard von Bingen Genesis - Structure - Composition

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Mechthild Dreyer; Professor Dr. Andreas Kuczera; Professor Dr. Thomas Stäcker
• Subject Area: Roman Catholic Theology
• Term: from 2020 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 429863245

The letters of Hildegard von Bingen (1098 - 1179) are preserved in a complex tradition. The so-called Riesen-Codex (Hochschul- und Landesbibliothek RheinMain Hs 2), which offers a book of letters composed to a theological work (Liber epistolarum), occupies a special position. According to the current state of research, this version of the Letter Collection occupies an outstanding position for two reasons. On the one hand, the Liber epistolarum in the medieval modern Hildegard reception is regarded as a work of equal importance to the Visionsschriften. On the other hand, it is regarded as a last hand edition, as it was designed by Hildegard's staff during her lifetime according to her ideas from the entirety of her letters.This research project will present this work for the first time in an edition. In contrast to the existing critical edition of Hildegard's letters by van Acker/Klaes (1993-2001), which aims to reconstruct the correspondence that actually took place, while mixing up the stages of transmission, the present project with the Liber epistolarum of the Giant Code focuses on the last and at the same time Hildegard's authorized form of transmission of her letters. Consequently, the individual letters of this collection are weighted as parts of a theological-literary composition and not as witnesses of an exchange of letters that has occurred historically.The publication of the Liber epistolarum is designed as a digital publication and will also be printed in book form. It is supplemented by an analysis of the development of the letters. In this analysis, the process of text genesis of the individual letters, from the oldest version to their form in the Liber epistolarum, is modelled on the basis of the project-relevant manuscripts in the graph. The complex, network-like delivery situation of Hildegard's letters is made accessible with the help of a graph model. Investigations of this network can be supplemented by content criteria, since the letter texts are integrated into the graph model with the help of a standoff-markup-based editor, whereby the content annotations use TEI semantics. Digital edition and graph-modelled analysis are made accessible in the context of long-term archiving on a web platform in such a way that they meet the analysis, research and publication needs of both the editors and the research community. Access to the digital copies of the manuscripts is via a faceted search mask and graph-based exploration interface. For the publication of the contents corresponding routines are maintained.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants