There is no complete edition of the works of Hildegard. For the
majority of readers the most convenient collection will doubtless be
vol. 197 of Migne, _Patrologia Latina_. This can be supplemented from
Cardinal J. B. Pitra’s well-edited _Analecta sacra_, the eighth volume
of which contains certain otherwise inaccessible works of Hildegard,[9]
and is the only available edition of the _Liber vitae meritorum per
simplicem hominem a vivente luce, revelatorum_.
Manuscripts of the writings of our abbess are numerous and are widely
scattered over Europe. Four of them are of special importance for our
purpose, and are here briefly described.
(A) is a vast parchment of 480 folios in the Nassauische
Landesbibliothek at Wiesbaden. This much-thumbed volume, still bearing
the chain that once tethered it to some monastic desk, is written in
a thirteenth-century script. There is evidence that it was prepared
in the neighbourhood of Hildegard’s convent, if not in that convent
itself. It is interesting as a collection of those works that the
immediate local tradition attributed to her, and is thus useful as
a standard of genuineness.[10] Reference will be made to it in the
following pages as the _Wiesbaden Codex A._ Its contents are as follows: