Hrosvitha

German-Saxon poet, playwright, and historian

• Born: c. 930-935
• Birthplace: Probably Gandersheim, Lower Saxony (now in Germany)
• Died: c. 1002
• Place of death: Probably the Benedictine convent of Gandersheim, Lower Saxony (now in Germany)

A learned Benedictine canoness whose writings were in Latin, Hrosvitha was the first Saxon poet, the first known dramatist of Christianity, and the earliest known historian of Germany.

Hrosvitha writes in her history of Gandersheim that Liudolf was in the service of King Louis I, grandson of Charlemagne (742-814). The Carolingian Empire that Charlemagne initiated in the ninth century led to a renaissance of enlightened learning in Germany during the “Dark Ages,” including the founding of twenty monasteries in Saxony, including eleven for women. The first three abbesses of Gandersheim were daughters of Liudolf and Oda.

Otto I (Otto the Great, 912-973), a descendant of Liudolf, ruled Germany during Hrosvitha’s time. After he conquered northern Italy and was crowned king of the Lombards, Otto I was given the Imperial crown by Pope John XII in 951 and thus became the first Holy Roman Emperor. Hrosvitha’s writings formed part of the literary activity by which the age of Otto the Great sought to emulate that of Charles the Great. She wrote an epic chronicle of his reign called Gesta Ottonis (973; the deeds of Otto, partial translation in Hrosvithae Liber terius: A Text with Translation, 1943). was born. He later ruled with his father as co-emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and was a friend of Hrosvitha. She once wrote that her abbess, Princess Gerberga, was younger than she, leading to the suggestion that because Gerberga was born in 940, Hrosvitha was born sometime between 930 and 935. The literary efforts of Hrosvitha were encouraged by the abbess and by a teacher and nun named Richarda.

Because only novices from noble families were chosen to enter the monasteries of her time, Hrosvitha was probably of noble birth. She may have entered the abbey at a very young age, because her skill in Latin indicates that she had many years of training in the language and it is known that some young women made the decision to pursue the religious life as early as twelve years of age. She also may have learned Greek because she often used Greek sources in her stories and Abbess Gerberga and her sister had studied Greek.

The monasteries of Saxony were considered “free” abbeys, meaning that even in the convents the abbesses were responsible to the king rather than to the church. However, in 947, Otto I freed the Gandersheim Abbey from royal rule, giving the abbess complete authority. Contrary to later restrictions on women, she had her own court of law, coined her own money, had a seat in the Imperial Diet, and even sent soldiers to battle. She was directly responsible for the nuns and canonesses in the abbey.

The office of canoness first appeared in the eighth century and included vows of chastity and obedience, but not the vow of poverty as taken by the nuns. Although they followed the Rule of Saint Benedict, including communal living and daily recitation of the Divine Office, they had more freedom than the nuns. They could receive guests, own books and property, have servants, and enter and leave the monastery with permission.

Hrosvitha’s writings indicate a wide knowledge of both classical and religious literature, suggesting that Gandersheim had a generous collection of manuscripts and a first-rate library. By her own admission, she obtained all her information from the convent’s library, except for some personal accounts of contemporary events from guests and friends. Her writings indicate a familiarity with Scholastic philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, music, and the works of such writers as Vergil, Terence, Ovid, and Boethius.

Life’s Work

Hrosvitha’s works reflect a deep devotion and dedication to God and an attitude of humility and openness to truth from any source. It is clear from the prefaces to her writings that the sole desire behind her intellectual and literary efforts was to glorify God and the saints through literary forms borrowed from pagan sources. She admits that some of her work is based on questionable material but that even such material can reveal truth.

The niece of Otto I, Princess Gerberga II, was consecrated as abbess of Gandersheim in 959. She became a teacher and friend of Hrosvitha, who is believed by some to have entered the convent in 955, the year in which Otto II

Early Life

Hrosvitha (rohz-VEE-tah) was a tenth century canoness who lived in the Benedictine convent of Gandersheim in Lower Saxony. Little is known about her life apart from what can be construed from the times in which she lived and from her writings, including a chronicle in verse on the history of the convent of Gandersheim

Hrosvitha produced a series of writings in three different genres, all in Latin, which in the tenth century was the only language used for literary composition. In addition to her two chronicles on the Gesta Ottonis and Primordia coenobii Gandershemensis, she wrote eight epic poems and six dramas based on Bible stories and legends of saints and martyrs. The themes of her works are conversion, chastity, and faithfulness to Christ, even unto martyrdom. Most of her writings are themselves a conversion of pagan forms and vices into Christian literature extolling virtues. She often demonstrated how feminine faithfulness could defeat male might.

Her least important writings were her eight narrative poems, all around 959-962. Two are biblical poems, one on the life of Mary and one on the ascension of Christ, the former based on the Bible and the apocryphal Gospel of Saint James. Six are legends of saints and martyrs: of Saint Gangolf, a Burgundian prince; on the youthful Saint Pelagius, based on firsthand reports she heard of the recent martyrdom of a young Christian captive who resists the homosexual advances of the caliph of Córdoba; on the fall and conversion of Theophilus, the earliest poem based on the medieval legend of Faust; on Basilius, a similar story about an unhappy young man saved from a pact with the devil; on the martyrdom of Saint Dionysius; and on the martyrdom of Saint Agnes, based on a biography by Saint Ambrose.

Hrosvitha’s literary reputation rests on her six dramatic works, all written after 963, which mark the beginning of nonliturgical Christian theater in Europe. She used the Roman dramatist Terence (c. 190-159 b.c.e.) as her model, but she replaced his depiction of the victory of vice with the triumph of purity in saintly virgins. She confesses to embarrassment in her portrayal of unholy love. This especially applies to several dramas based on the theme of sensual love in which the stronger is the temptation, the greater is the triumph of virtue.

Three of the plays, {I}Gallicanus{/I}, Dulcitius , and Sapientia (all translated into English in 1923), describe the struggle between infant Christianity and paganism, including martyrdoms under Hadrian, Diocletian, and Julian the Apostate. In Gallicanus, this pagan general of Emperor Constantine seeks to marry his daughter, Constantia, who has taken a vow of chastity, but the suitor is converted and dies as a martyr. Dulcitius, a prefect of Diocletian, imprisons three Christian maidens in a kitchen and tries to seduce them in the night, but he suffers a delusion in which he embraces the sooty pots and pans before the maidens are martyred. Sapientia describes the legend of three holy virgins, Faith, Hope, and Charity, who were tortured by the emperor Hadrian and martyred in the presence of their mother, Wisdom.

The three plays Callimachus (English translation, 1923), Abraham (English translation, 1923), and Paphnutius (English translation, 1914) describe the conflict between the flesh and the spirit and the penance required by those who allow the flesh to triumph. In Callimachus, the title character’s guilty passion for Drusiana follows her to the grave; but after he is bitten by a serpent, both he and Drusiana are raised from the dead by the prayers of Saint John the Apostle. In Abraham, a holy hermit in the disguise of a lover rescues his niece Mary from harlotry and leads her to conversion followed by twenty years of penance. In Paphnutius, another hermit disguised as a lover exhorts Thais to renounce her evil life, leading to her conversion and three years of penance in a narrow cell.

Hrosvitha often gives insights into her mastery of medieval knowledge. In Sapientia she confounds Hadrian by answering his question about the ages of her daughters with a discussion of number theory as given by Boethius. She defines a perfect number as one that equals the sum of its factors (28 = 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14) and gives four that were known to the Greeks (6, 28, 496, 8,128). In Paphnutius she describes the mathematical relationship between music and astronomy, noting the ratios between concordant tones in the seven intervals of the octave corresponding to those in the seven planets, and concludes that “God has set all things in number and measure and weight.”

Significance

Through her prefaces, it is clear that Hrosvitha was commissioned by her abbess Gerberga, Otto II, and other “learned and virtuous men,” sharing her manuscripts with them. However, her works seemed to have had little influence beyond Gandersheim, where they were probably read aloud by the nuns and may have been performed at the convent or even at the court of Otto II. They probably also served in educating the nuns.

After five centuries of neglect, they were discovered in 1493 by the German humanist Conrad Celtes in the Benedictine monastery at Saint Emmeram at Regensburg. After editing by Celtes, they were published in 1501 at Nuremberg, with eight woodcuts, thought to be by Albrecht Dürer, illustrating incidents in the plays. The frontispiece shows Hrosvitha presenting her works to Otto II and Abbess Gerberga. Subsequent editions were published in 1707 at Wittenberg, a French translation in 1845 at Paris, a German translation at Lübeck in 1857, and many more translations since. Modern performances of her plays began with marionette performances in 1888 at Paris and continued to the professional stages of London and New York.

In addition to being the first known dramatist of Christianity, Hrosvitha was also the earliest known historian of Germany, and her chronicles have been of considerable value to modern historians. Her works reveal the breadth of knowledge in early medieval monasteries, including musical theory, astronomical knowledge, number theory, and classical history and philosophy.

Bibliography

Dronke, Peter. Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua to Marguerite Potete. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984. This study has a good twenty-nine-page chapter on Hrosvitha and her writings.

Haight, Anne Lyon, ed. Hroswitha of Gandersheim: Her Life, Her Times, Her Works. New York: Hroswitha Club, 1965. The most complete book about Hrosvitha and her works in English, including sections by Marjorie Dana Barlow listing performances of her plays since 1888 and printed editions of her works.

Penrose, Mary E. Roots Deep and Strong: Great Men and Women of the Church. New York: Paulist Press, 1995. A popular account of early church men and women with a chapter, “Hroswitha: Playwright and Poet,” describing her life and times.

St. John, Christopher, trans. The Plays of Roswitha. New York: Cooper Square, 1966. This English translation of the plays includes the prefaces to all her works and has two good introductions to her life and her plays.

Thiebaux, Marcelle. The Writings of Medieval Women. 2d ed. New York: Garland, 1994. A chapter on Hrosvitha, “Hagiographer, Playwright, Epic Historian,” has a good introduction to her legend Pelagius and her play Dulcitius.