Born: 935 (circa), Germany
Died: 973
Country most active: Germany
Also known as: Hrotsvit, Hrosvite, Hroswitha, Hroswithe, Rhotswitha, Roswit and Roswitha
The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
The famous formula for a feudal society includes three orders: those who pray, those who work, and those who fight. The first recorded use of this idea is thought to have been a late ninth-century translation of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, and it is still popular a millennium later. A more nuanced understanding of life in medieval Europe, however, becomes available with the introduction of another category: women.
The first known female playwright, Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, lived in Lower Saxony in the late tenth century, and she can be described well by none of the three orders listed above. Though she lived in a religious community, she was not a professed nun. Gandersheim Abbey was an imperial abbey of secular canonesses who were well-educated, wealthy, unmarried daughters of the Ottonian dynasty that came into power after the collapse of the Carolingian Empire. Members of the Ottonian nobility were able to maintain a certain amount of dynastic control by placing their dowered daughters in this religious sequestration that did not require the permanent profession of a monastic vocation.
As a consequence, Gandersheim Abbey flourished as a female cultural and political center. In 947 Emperor Otto I (r. 962–73) provided his niece, the Abbess Gerberga II, with an independent princedom distinct from royal control. Gandersheim was therefore able to hold its own court of law, keep its own military, mint its own coins, send its own political ambassadors, and answer directly to the papacy without local ecclesial interference. In this setting Hrotsvitha composed six plays, eight legends, and two historical epic poems all of which she wrote in Latin. Complaining that the poet Terence did not represent virtuous women in his plays, Hrotsvitha wrote corrective narratives with strong female leads, who often chose martyrdom instead of dishonor.
The oldest known and most complete manuscript of Hrotsvitha’s work is preserved in the Emmeram-Munich Codex (Clm 14485) that was discovered by the German humanist Conrad Celtes in 1493/1494 in the monastery library of Saint Emmeram at Regensburg. He edited and rearranged Hrotsvitha’s writings and published her first oeuvre in 1501. The Rare Book and Special Collections Division has a first issue of this printing in the Rosenwald Collection. The woodcut image below is one of two in this book by the artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). In this imagined scene, Hrotsvitha presents her literary work to the Emperor Otto I, while her teacher, the crowned Abbess Gerberga II, observes from her position of authority with her abbess’ staff (crosier) in her hand.
The discovery of Hrosvitha’s writing was celebrated in the spirit of Renaissance humanism and monumentalized in the 1501 printing as the discovery of the earliest-known German poet. In the dedication, Hrosvitha is called the eleventh muse, and she is compared to the ancient Greek poet Sappho, the earliest known female poet whom Plato famously named the tenth muse. Written for the humanist audience of the early sixteenth century, the prefatory material conveys more about the literary and patriotic interests of the German humanist movement at that time than it does about the singularity of Hrosvitha’s work in her own period.
Inspired by Terence and other classical authors, Hrosvitha—the first post-classical playwright of any gender—wrote from within and for her community at Gandersheim, crafting sophisticated literary works for an audience of woman. Subverting rhetorical motifs of weakness and strength, Hrosvitha used the depth of her training in classical literature as well as her monastic context to create plays reimagining the acceptability of the violence and brutality toward women that permeated many of her source texts. The 1501 printing of Hrosvitha’s works is a multilayered study of textual interpretation that challenges its readers to question broader historical narratives and delve into particulars.
The following is excerpted from A Cyclopædia of Female Biography, published 1857 by Groomsbridge and Sons and edited by Henry Gardiner Adams.
HROSWITHA, (Helena Y. Rossen,) a nun of the Benedictine order, was born in Saxony, and died at Gandershein, in 984. She is known as a religious poetess through her “Comædia Sacrce VI.,” edited by Schurzfleisch. These plays were written by her to suppress the reading of Terence, then a very popular author among the literary clergy of the age. She also composed a poetic narrative of the deeds performed by Otho the Great, to whom she was related, and a number of elegies. She wrote altogether in Latin. Her works were printed in Nuremberg, in 1601.
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
ROSWITHA OF GANDERSHEIM (920-975)
At the Woman’s World Congress, in Chicago, 1893, Helene Modjeska, chosen leader of the drama in America, placed Roswitha as the first German dramatist. Roswitha taught idealism and morality in all her writings. She believed the drama was the most effective medium through which to impress the minds of the people. She said that it is just as interesting to write about a good woman as one of the opposite kind. In all her dramas virtue is triumphant. The Convent of Gandersheim, founded by Roswitha, a nun and a noblewoman by birth, contained many women of the noblest families of the land. Wars had caused a great shortage of men and Gandersheim proved an oasis for these cultured maidens. Here an opportunity was afforded to study the fine arts and crafts, such as weaving, sewing, and embroidering; costuming, staging, and composing the music for their own plays; cultivating beautiful gardens as a background for magnificent outdoor pageants, in which were dramatized scenes pertaining to religion and patriotism. In 1501, Roswitha’s literary works were found and published. They were illustrated by Durer.