I ran into this issue using Hibernate 4.1.2.Final. I found a working fix for CollectionBinder.bind() :
String role = StringHelper.qualify( declaringClass.getName(), propertyName ); if ( mappings.getCollection( role ) != null ) { role = StringHelper.qualify( propertyHolder.getPath(), propertyName ); }
I'm not sure if this code is correct, but at least it fixes the issues in my project and in the testcase provided by Oliver.