[In the following essay, Sprague surveys Hroswitha's life and works, focusing on the author's development in her six dramas.]

From the far away past emerges a picture of a nun, with habit tucked up to her ankles and with manuscript in hand, striding up and down a great hall in a convent directing her sisters in a play she herself has written. This is Sister Hroswitha, the pride of the Benedictine Convent of Gandersheim, Saxony, who wrote, as far as can be ascertained, the very first plays in the Western world after the collapse of the Roman Empire. She is not the figment of some pseudo-historian's imagination. There is incontrovertible proof of her existence in the History of Gandersheim compiled by Henricus Bodo in 1025¹, and in Munich there is a manuscript codex which proves that she not only wrote plays, six of them, but also wrote seven poems in leonine hexameters on the lives of assorted saints and an epic on the career of Emperor Otto the Great.

Because the religious life has always made great virtue of anonymity, it is almost impossible to document anything about Hroswitha with certainty. Calendar addicts, with their passion for statistics, have tried in vain to date her. She was born, they think, in A.D. 932 or 933—perhaps. She was probably professed in 959. To say which one of her literary efforts was created first would be no more than a guess for their standard of performance is uniform. It may be that the epic on Emperor Otto was completed in time for the coronation of his son and successor in 968 or perhaps its creation occupied Hroswitha until her death in 982. Or did she live, as some authorities maintain, to what then would have been an incredibly old age and die in 1002?

Considerable annoyance has been levelled against Hroswitha's first editor, Dr. Conrad Celtes, who discovered what was believed to be the unique copy of her writings and published it in 1501.² The avid calendar addicts have felt that since Celtes was, after all, four hundred years closer in time to the lady than we of the Twentieth Century, he might have made a little more effort to compile a proper biography. But in our age of personal curiosity, called psychological interest, Celtes' disinterest in the nun's private life is rather refreshing. He and the members of his literary fraternity, the "Rheinische Sodalitat," were far more excited over presenting a Latin writer of German birth than they were about her vital statistics. For just as these men considered the German Holy Roman Empire a continuation of the Imperial Rome of the Caesars, so they definitely considered Hroswitha's literary efforts a continuation of the classic tradition. In her honor, they composed epigrams to demonstrate the rare scholastic excitement which possessed them:

Those gifts her native generation granted to
 few of her sex,
Hroswitha did reveal in virginal genius!

Why should we not praise the writings of this
 German maid,
Who, were she Greek, would by now have
 been made a goddess?

How much the righteous deities of Heaven
 favor the Germans
You may discern from this learned virgin.

You Greek, you Italian,
What do you think of this German maid?³

It can be readily seen that the Rheinische Sodalitat did not agree that "scholarship" knows nothing of geographical boundaries. Yet, for all his patriotic fervor, Celtes did not answer the question: How did Hroswitha happen to write plays? Homilies, tracts, catechisms, even devotional poems, would seem to be more likely literary areas for a nun to employ her facile pen. Whatever possessed her to enter the theatre?

It was axiomatic long before Marx and Freud that the best way to approach an author is through his works, but, at first glance, Hroswitha's Opera are unrewarding as biographical sources. Their implications, however, are quite another matter. The introduction to the long pseudo-Vergilian epic on the life of Emperor Otto the Great states that Hroswitha was given the task of writing it as an act of obedience by Abbess Gerberga of the Gandersheim Convent. The Abbess was a cousin of the Emperor, therefore it can be assumed that the royal family knew of the undertaking, may even have commissioned it. Here is further proof that Hroswitha's contemporaries considered her as the continuer of the classic epic tradition. The poems on the lives of Saints Agnes, Pelagius, and Gongolfus tell little more, though Gongolfus, the patron saint of henpecked husbands, was, perhaps, an unexpected subject. But the four remaining poems on the Birth of the Blessed Virgin, the Conversion of Theophilus, and the lives of Saints Basil and Dionysius, and the six plays—Gallicanus, Dulcitius, Callimachus, Abraham, Paphnutius, Sapientia—shed considerable light on the author and her background.

Without exception these poems and plays find their sources in that vast quantity of extra-canonical Biblical literature, decreed by Rome to be lacking in authenticity if not downright heretical. Certainly it was extracurricular reading in a tenth-century German convent, and Hroswitha admits it:

Now, if it be objected that some parts of my work are taken from apocryphal sources, this was not a fault caused by wanton presumption, but a mistake due to ignorance, for, when I laid the foundations, I was not aware that these were doubtful matters on which I had begun to labor.… But, when I recognised this, I was loth to destroy, because that which seems to be falsehood may haply prove to be truth.

[Praefatio 1]⁴

An astounding statement from a supposedly loyal daughter of Rome!

The questions occur at once: How did she get hold of these doubtful materials? How did she dare defend herself for using them? The answers are quite simple. Although Rome condemned the apocryphal acts and gospels, they were read and venerated by the Catholic Church of the East which was already straining away from the mother church. The saints of Hroswitha are the saints of the hagiography of the church of the Byzantine Empire and it was from this church that she derived the inspiration for her plays.

The intimate connection between tenth-century Germany and Byzantium is not always considered by historians. They place the time of Hroswitha's entrance into Gandersheim in the Dark Ages and let it go at that, failing to note that, although the rest of Europe was in turmoil with the influence of Christianity at its lowest ebb owing to the intrigues among several rival popes, Germany was enjoying a period of comparative peace and prosperity. She alone among the nations had the leisure and inclination for cultural pursuits. Emperor Otto (936-973) was a strong ruler; his wife was Adelheid of Burgundy, a brilliant, exceedingly well-educated woman whose long residence in Italy prior to her marriage had brought her into contact with Byzantine culture. As Holy Roman Empress, she naturally had great influence, and when it came time for her son, the future Otto II, to marry, she masterfully arranged an alliance with Princess Theophano, sister of Basil II, the Macedonian Emperor.

It was through Theophano that the great culture of Byzantium came directly into Germany. She was a granddaughter of Constantine VII, the author of the Liber de Cerimoniis, whose devotion to the hippodrome and the theatre has gone down in history as without precedent, even for an aficionado in that pleasure-loving city. Theophano had witnessed the attack launched on the theatre by the Church and had watched the efforts of Constantine to reconcile the theatre-mad city and the censuring ecclesiastics by bringing drama into the churches and substituting religious pageants for pagan spectacles. The theatre, then, which in the West had degenerated into mere exhibitions by strolling mountebanks, was an integral part of Theophano's life. It is, therefore, only reasonable to assume that with her wealth and power and ability she would try to adapt some of the glittering shows of Byzantium to her new life.

And this is where Hroswitha enters the scene. After a few years at Gandersheim as a student, Princess Sophia, daughter of Theophano and Otto II, took the veil there. Bodo records that Theophano visited the convent frequently on holy days and that Dowager Empress Adelheid came there to spend the last years of her life. Abbess Gerberga, as has already been noted, was the Emperor's cousin. Hroswitha, then, was in daily contact with one or another of the imperial family which was so profoundly Byzantine in its cultural outlook and personal tastes. This fact is corroborated in the first Praefatio, in which the nun tells how her first instruction in the writer's art came from the illustrious Abbess Gerberga, who, "With great condescension, explicated certain writers to me, of which she had been taught by men of great learning."

It might be noted here that if Hroswitha received explications de texte from Gerberga her residence at Gandersheim must have considerably antedated her profession, for once Gerberga became abbess she would have had no time for teaching. In other words, Hroswitha must also have been a student there.

What sort of education would she have received? Within its medieval limitations, excellent. In addition to the elementary lessons in deportment, table manners, embroidery, and elegant conversation, the girls were taught the trivium—grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Classes were conducted in Latin and private tutors were available for instruction in Greek. Those who survived this lower division were permitted to follow the quadrivium—arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. Hroswitha would have received additional instruction in philosophy and theology and would have been steeped in Holy Writ. And since, to use Allardyce Nicoll's exquisite phrase, "A good latinity was next to godliness," she read the Latin poets and the plays of Publius Terentius Afer as examples of stylistic excellence.

What was Hroswitha's milieu at Gandersheim? Very different from the usual conception of convent life. Abbess Gerberga directed an enormous estate and had a seat in the German Imperial Diet. As her vote was greatly sought after, she would travel, pay visits, receive important political figures and hold feasts in their honor. She could attend classes at St. Emmeran's Monastery at nearby Ratisbon, where the monks were renowned for their learning, and invite the reverend fathers to hold similar classes for her nuns at Gandersheim. It is not at all a stretch of the imagination to identify these monks as the "men of great learning" mentioned by Hroswitha in her third Praefatio nor to say further that one of them was doubtless the scholarly Bishop William of Mainz, the Emperor's brother. It is not at all fantastic to postulate that the "writers" or books which Gerberga explicated were loaned or given to the Abbess by Empress Theophano and put into the hands of the brilliant Sister Hroswitha to use as background material for the literary career which she had definitely decided to follow:

I did not wish the small talent entrusted to me to rust through neglect, lying idle and buried in the depths of a sluggish heart, but rather that it might be beaten out by the hammer of constant devotion and give forth a little tinkle of divine praise.

[Praefatio 1]

With an abbess sympathetic to secular learning, an empress addicted to the theatre, and the pageant atmosphere of an imperial court, it is easy to see what gradually moved Hroswitha toward playwriting. The spark which ignited her inspiration is told in the second Praefatio:

Many Catholics are found doing that which we cannot wholly disavow ourselves; namely, to prefer because of the eloquence of its cultivated speech, the vanity of heathen literature to the edification of Holy Scripture. There are others, moreover, who, while they do cling to the sacred pages, nevertheless read too often the works of Terence, and, while being delighted with the sweetness of his diction, are defiled with the acquaintance of unholy things. Therefore 1, the "Loud Cry of Gandersheim" [her literal translation of the name Hroswitha] would celebrate, insofar as my poor talents permit, the praiseworthy chastity of dedicated virgins, in the same manner in which he wrote of the shameful abominations of wanton women!

The influence of Terence on Hroswitha has been the subject of much discussion, so there is no need to repeat it here. Suffice it to say that Terence's plots, revolving around dissipated young men about town, wily thieving slaves, foolish elderly senators, beautiful courtesans, and boastful soldiers might very well have brought a blush to Hroswitha's cheek. Those authorities who maintain that she was also conversant with Plautus leave us to infer that his plays rendered her speechless. While recognizing that, even in the cloister, there must be an occasional change from the stately tread of the Acta Sanctorum, she became deeply concerned at the sight of religious, dedicated to God, filling their eyes and minds with such irreligious literature. In addition to her own concern, she would have felt the added impetus of the Church's attitude, for Empress Theophano would certainly have told her how actors in Byzantium burlesqued and made mock of Christian ceremonies and sacraments, and how playwrights vied with one another to produce yet more ribald blasphemies. Thus it was that Hroswitha determined something must be done, and decided to write some plays herself. They were to be written in the best and most polished Latin at her command and treat of subjects fit to be heard within convent walls.

Gallicanus

Her first play, Gallicanus, was a most ambitious maiden effort. Her hero was an actual historical personage, one of Emperor Constantine's greatest generals. As the play opens, he is about to depart for the Scythian front. He asks the Emperor for the Princess Constantia's hand in marriage should he return victorious. The Emperor, though aware that his daughter has taken the vow of chastity, is constrained to agree. He reckons without Constantia's resourcefulness. She not only prays for Gallicanus in a prayer of remarkable eloquence, considering the amount of theology the playwright manages to condense into one paragraph, but also sends her two spiritual advisors, John and Paul, to the front in order to give tangible assistance to her earnest desire.

The play proceeds with a blithe disregard of all unities, and soon the opposing forces meet in battle. Gallicanus's troops are yielding under the Scythian attack. "What will happen?" he cries, "My soldiers despise me and yield." At this crucial moment, John calls to him over the battle's din, "Vow to the God of Heaven that you will become a Christian and you shall conquer." Without an instant's hesitation Gallicanus answers, "I do so vow. May my deeds seal it!" Immediately the Scythians surrender and Gallicanus wins the day.

He returns to Rome to give his account of the battle to the Emperor. He takes it to the darkest hour:

Emperor. And how did you escape?
Gallicanus. My dear companions, John and Paul,
     persuaded me to make a vow to my Creator
     … and as I opened my mouth to pray, I felt
     the aid of Heaven.… There came to me a
     youth, bearing a cross on his shoulder, who
     bade me follow him with drawn sword.
Emperor. Whoever he was, he was sent straight from
     Heaven.
Gallicanus. I complied, and straightway on my right
     hand and left there stood armed warriors.
Emperor. The hosts of Heaven!
Gallicanus. I doubt it not, and straightway following
     that youth, I walked unafraid into the midst of
     the foe.

The hero then makes the astounding announcement that, at his baptism following the victory, he had taken a vow of chastity. The Emperor now acquaints him with Constantia's vow, to which he replies amiably, "I pray she may abide in the same."

The question naturally arises why, since the battlefield conversion would make a most exciting moment, did Hroswitha fail to stage it. The answer is that Hroswitha was following her source. In all accounts of Gallicanus he is represented as telling the story to the Emperor, and, while as a playwright the unities might mean little to her, as a nun she must hesitate to deviate from a saint's legend.

Emperor and Gallicanus go into the palace to greet Constantia, who, surprised and pleased at the General's change of heart, invites him to live with them. But he draws the line at that. He states, "No temptation is greater to be withstood than the lust of the eyes, and it would not be good for me to see this maid too often, whom, as you know, I love better than my parents or my life or my very soul." He then bids them farewell and goes off to live as a hermit. Hroswitha's permitting a glimpse of the depth and reality of the soldier's love is a masterly touch. This fleeting worldly note prevents a scene, filled with expressions of noble virtue, from degenerating into one of mere platitudes. It also indicates a delightful feminine sympathy for the man. Nevertheless, Constantia is not permitted to waver for one moment. She is, throughout, as the author intended, a model to those vacillating sisters in religion who just might be persuaded to delight in Terence, over and above the stern voice of duty.

Gallicanus, Part II

Hroswitha takes up the action again in Gallicanus, Part II. Thirty years have passed and Rome is now under the rule of Julian the Apostate who is clearing the Empire of Christians. As Hroswitha never had a course in playwriting, she permits the first victim of the persecution to be none other than her former hero, Gallicanus. In the second scene he is removed from the stage. The Emperor says, "Oh worthy deed!" and turns next to John and Paul. He asks these advisors to serve him but they refuse. He reminds them that he, too, was once high up in the Church but that he quickly discovered that there was no profit in the Christian religion so returned to the old gods of Rome. "Devil's disciple," Paul mutters, under his breath, then says aloud, "You have left all true religion and follow the superstition of idolatry." Julian offers both high rank; they spurn him. He gives them ten days in which to change their minds, but Paul says proudly, "Do what you have already decided to do," and the Emperor sentences them both to death.

Hroswitha, however, refuses to end her play so somberly. The soldier chosen to execute John and Paul has a son. The boy becomes possessed of the devil and the father is convinced that he is being punished for executing the saints. He wails, "I, miserable wretch that I am, obeyed the behest of the ungodly Emperor Julian," and he begs the Christians for help, professing his belief and penitently asking to be baptized. At that very moment the boy is cured and the curtain falls on a scene of pious rejoicing.

Judged even by later miracle plays, neither part of Gallicanus can be termed a drama. The characters are mere figureheads and are manoeuvred in episodic pageant fashion to suit the author's expositions of theology. Yet, it is impossible to read them without being forcibly struck by the nun's own reverence. Her belief is so great that even palpable absurdities become unimportant and a twentieth-century reader, almost in spite of himself, willingly suspends his own belief.

Dulcitius

The second play, Dulcitius, finds Hroswitha writing in a slightly different vein. Three sisters—Irene, Agape, and Chionia—are condemned to death by Emperor Diocletian who turns them over to Prefect Dulcitius for execution. Dulcitius, however, being a lecherous old pagan, has other ideas. Upon attempting to make love to the sisters, he is suddenly stricken with madness and rushes around the kitchen embracing the pots and pans in the belief that he has caught them. Shades of the bemused old gentleman of Terence! Here, however, not a wily slave confounds the lecher but the power of God. The audience is regaled with the sight of a Roman senator, covered with pot blacking and pitch, being refused admission to the imperial palace. "What goes on here?" Dulcitius wails, "Am I not arrayed in Splendid robes? Am I not gorgeous from head to foot? And yet the porter scorns me as a horrible monster." The maiden Agape comments, "It is most fitting he should appear in body as he is in his mind, possessed of the devil." Finally, furious at his lack of success, Dulcitius commands that the sisters be put to torture and then burned at the stake.

The three sisters are heroines quite foreign to the classic tradition. Their characters are far removed from the meek, subservient Pamphilias and Glyceriums of Terence, for the girls have a courage and independence born of virtue and they are completely fearless. Hroswitha doubtlessly intended them as examples of what women could become if they were wholly, militantly Christian. While their nobility may seem a trifle implausible now, perhaps that is an adverse commentary on our own times rather than any criticism of Hroswitha. The sisters did not seem implausible to the contemporary audience which is the important thing. The scenes of Dulcitius' madness were intended for comic relief, and a good actor, even a nun with dramatic flair, could make considerable of them. Pots and pans occupy only a brief space in the action, however. It is as though the playwright suddenly recollected herself, for the action soon returns to proceed on its way to martyrdom and glory.

Callimachus

In her third play, Callimachus, Hroswitha treads on shakier ground. She calls it, "The hateful madness of unlawful lovers, even such things as may not be heard among us" [Praefatio II]. Callimachus deals with the affection of a young man for a married woman. Today's audience does not consider this subject taboo but Hroswitha and her audience did.

Callimachus is a bachelor of Edessa, frantically in love with Drusiana, a respectable matron, who is shocked by his importunities and repulses him emphatically:

Drusiana. I wonder, young man, that you speak thus
     to me. By what right of kinship or legal bond
     do you love me?
Callimachus. Your beauty!
Drusiana. My beauty? Go away, you wicked
     seducer. I'm ashamed to listen to you.
Callimachus. You doubtless blush to confess what
     affection my love arouses in you.
Drusiana. Nothing but indignation.

Callimachus finally goes away, vowing revenge, and Drusiana prays for death, lest she not only fall into sin herself but also tempt another to sin.

Her prayer is answered. She is laid in her tomb by her husband but even this does not bring Callimachus to his senses. He bribes the servant, Fortunatus, to admit him to the sepulcher and there falls on his knees beside the bier crying, "Oh! Drusiana, Drusiana, I adored you with all my heart. You rejected me in life, but now—now I have you in my power!" Thought naturally turns to Romeo and Juliet, but Hroswitha sees to it that her Callimachus is no Romeo—he receives his just deserts. A serpent glides into the tomb and he and the untrustworthy Fortunatus lie dead.

The scene then shifts to a street in Edessa. Andronicus, husband of Drusiana, and St. John the Evangelist are on their way to the bier to pray when they are confronted by a Youth of Flaming Aspect (a typical description of a Byzantine Angelic Messenger). He bids them hurry so that St. John may raise Drusiana and her unfortunate lover. They obey, and St. John with delightful practicality, first disposes of the snake: "We do not want him harmed again by the bite of a serpent," he says, and then he raises Callimachus. The young man, wholly repentant, confesses his sin and receives absolution. Then the Saint raises Drusiana, who also forgives her onetime lover. But Fortunatus, when raised, refuses to repent: "I'd rather be dead than see such virtue triumph in them," he says surlily. Retribution is swift. Fortunatus's serpent bites swell up and he falls to the ground in agony.

Once the miraculous aspect is accepted, Callimachus emerges as a tightly knit drama with a quite powerful final scene. The character of Callimachus is certainly modelled on the young Athenians whom Terence loved so well, and Fortunatus is similar to the wily slaves. But Drusiana is entirely new. Like Caesar's wife, she is above reproach, but Hroswitha has given her the added virtue of true Christianity which raises her sense of honor above mere ethics, something Terence could never have understood. And neither could he have understood a woman who preferred death to temptation, for his ladies were invariably accommodating. In this respect Hroswitha's heroines mark the beginning of a new tradition in the theatre.

Abraham

The chief interest in the brief play Abraham lies in its resemblance to Paphnutius which followed and excelled it. Two hermits, Abraham and Ephraim, find themselves with Abraham's twelve-year-old niece in their custody. They do not know what to do about her, and the only thing that occurs to them is to have her take a vow of perpetual poverty, chastity, and good works. At this early age such a promise is easily given, but once in her teens Mary decides she has had enough of it and runs away with a renegade monk. She disappears completely for two years and then Abraham receives word that she is living at Assos and is a notorious harlot. He disguises himself as a profligate man about town (Hroswitha demanded much of her actors, considering they were nuns) and goes to Mary. His disguise admits him, but once in her presence, he casts aside his gaudy cloak and pleads with her to return to the desert with him:

Abraham. Why did you forsake me? Why didn't
     you tell me you had fallen into weakness, so
     that I might have helped you and prayed for
     you?
Mary. After I fell, I thought I dare not approach
     you, holy man that you are.
Abraham. But who is sinless, but the Virgin's Son?
     … To err is human, but to continue in sin is
     damnable. He is not blamed who falls, but he
    who fails to rise again quickly.

Little by little he persuades her until she finally throws aside the jewels her lovers have given her and returns with her uncle to the hermitage.

In this scene, remarkable for its contemporary tone, Hroswitha shows consummate tact. She recognized that the play must consider Mary's sin, and that Abraham's comments must not leave even the most innocent novice in doubt, but she does not gloat over it. Her sole concern is that Mary repent, and Mary does. Her reason for writing the play is to demonstrate the great compassion of Almighty God, and although vice is treated realistically, neither underplayed nor avoided, her treatment has the delicacy which only a wholly immaculate mind can bestow. Taste is a much overused word, a too often ridiculed commodity, but Hroswitha's taste in this and similar situations is dependably excellent.

Paphnutius, or, The Conversion of Thaïs

The fifth play, Paphnutius, or, the Conversion of Thaïs, is Hroswitha's masterpiece. Almost everyone is familiar with Anatole France's novel, Thaïs, in which Massenet found the inspiration for his opera, but comparatively few people are aware that France was inspired to write his version of her story by a marionette performance of Paphnutius. Of course, in the Hroswitha treatment Paphnutius remains a saint throughout. He is a learned medieval doctor who, as the play opens, is discussing philosophy with a group of his disciples—a scene similar to many in which Hroswitha herself must frequently have taken part. The disciples are quite confused (another touch of realism) and Paphnutius admits that such abstruse doctrines are difficult to understand. Shortly he falls into deep melancholy, and when asked what is troubling him, he says that he is gravely concerned over the soul of the notorious courtesan, Thaïs. The disciples agree that she is in need of the Saint's concern "for she is not unknown to any man." Paphnutius accepts their statement, without inquiring as to the source of their information, and, after a little more conversation, he announces that he will go to Thaïs and exhort her to repentance.

Forthwith he goes to her and she receives him with, "I do not withdraw my presence nor refuse my company to any man," but when he asks to speak with her in strictest privacy, she answers, with a sudden flash of truth, "There is no place so hid, so secret, that the recess of it is not known to God." Rejoicing that she is at least aware of the Almighty, Paphnutius begins his exhortation. At first Thaïs listens with amusement, then she becomes angry, but gradually she is moved to sorrow. Finally she calls in her lovers and throws all the gifts they have given her onto a huge bonfire. Then she meekly takes the hand Paphnutius offers her and lets him lead her into a life of penance.

He brings her to a convent, and tells the Abbess that she is to be confined to a narrow cell, without doors or windows beyond a small opening to receive her daily ration of food. The Abbess, shaking her head, says, "I fear her tender spirit can ill endure such affliction." Paphnutius replies, "So grievous a sin must expect a stern remedy." The cell is prepared and when Thaïs is told that it will be her abode for the rest of her life she cries in horror, "How narrow, how dark, how comfortless!" Adamant, Paphnutius tells her that she must say nothing, even in prayer, except, "Thou Who hast created me, have mercy on me." Finally she enters the cell, and the door is sealed.

The entire scene is very moving. Its insight into the frame of mind of a woman, accustomed to every luxury, who has chosen in the name of religion to exist on less than the barest decencies, is remarkable. Lest her capitulation seems to come too quickly, it must be remembered that tenth-century audiences saw nothing unusual in instant conversions; if the penance imposed seems impossibly severe, the hidden austerities of religious life of the time must not be forgotten—the hair shirt, the discipline, the hours of kneeling with outstretched arms in imitation of the Cross. In an age when asceticism was a virtue to be practiced rather than endured and martyrdom was eagerly sought, Thaïs's compliance would have been held highly virtuous and commendable.

Three years pass and Paphnutius receives word that Thaïs is dying. He goes to her at once and tells her that because of her penance she is surely pardoned. This scene is brief and poignant with a heartbreaking moment at the end when Thaïs begs him not to let her die alone. Here Hroswitha reaches her highest stature as a playwright. The character of the erring Thaïs is beautifully and sympathetically realized; Paphnutius is excellent both in his character of stern moral censor and in his great compassion in the final scene. Were this the only extant play of hers, Hroswitha would still be a playwright with whom to reckon; several centuries elapsed before anything of equal beauty and significance appeared on the Western stage.

Sapientia

After Paphnutius the final play, Sapientia, is an anticlimax. Sapientia and her daughters, Faith, Hope, and Charity, come to Rome to convert Emperor Hadrian. The Emperor arrests and tries them in a scene filled with philosophical discussion, most of it drawn from the Roman philosopher, Boethius—a rather strange digression considering Hroswitha's usual directness. The mother and daughters refuse to recant and the girls are put to torture. Sapientia stands by, encouraging them, praying that they may be taken at once to Heaven. Stunned by such resignation, Hadrian releases her, but, after one more prayer, she dies and joins her daughters in death. It is a most extraordinary play, highly stylized, with none of the exaltation of Gallicanus and none of the humanity of Paphnutius. It is possible that Sapientia may have been an early work which Hros-witha revised for some special occasion at Gandersheim for a courtly audience which delighted in lengthy philosophical debate.

A great deal of ink has been spilled in an attempt to determine whether or not Hroswitha's plays were performed. This is rather foolish, for from what is known of Gandersheim and its patrons the plays must certainly have been performed. Objections are raised on the grounds that they would be impossible to stage, but the objectors forget that a medieval audience was accustomed to viewing contending armies, seraphic messengers, diabolic tempters, sacrifices, tortures, and heavenly ascents, separately or simultaneously as the action demanded. And would it not be difficult to imagine so devoted a theatregoer as Empress Theophano failing to see that they were performed once she knew of their existence? What of Hroswitha herself? Had she not written the plays to compete with Terence and what better competition could she provide than an actual performance?

Attempts have been made to assess the Hroswitha influence on the theatre. For many years it was customary to treat her as an isolated playwright whose Opera disappeared into oblivion until their recovery by Celtes. Recent discoveries, however, are rapidly modifying this view. The entire script of Gallicanus, without Hroswitha's name appended, has been found in the twelfth-century manuscript, Aldersbach Confessional, and there are other references to indicate that she was not unknown in Europe. The new viewpoint has been further strengthened by the discovery of a second Hroswitha codex at Cologne in 1922. It is entirely possible that the tenth-century nun, who is now the object of much scholarly interest, will eventually be linked to later continental miracle plays, and ultimately to the great miracle cycles of England.

So let us enjoy the portrait we have of her as it has emerged from this short survey of her life, her works, and her times. She was a brilliant, well-educated woman, a dedicated religious who retained the sense of urbanity and courtesy of the knightly society into which she had been born; a lady accustomed to royalty, to intellectual conversation, and one who had a considerable knowledge of the world and its ways; a scholar of sufficient wit and perception to see the possibilities for drama in books her church might adjudge unsound, and with the courage to use them as the sources for six plays, which, in any age or society, would bear the stamp of authentic genius. We may not be able to share her religious exaltation, but if we can comprehend it that will be enough. Certainly we must appreciate her single-handed efforts to Christianize the stage of her own time for the benefit of the stage that followed, and, perhaps, even comprehend the excitement of the French critic, Philatre Charles, who, after reading her plays, was moved to exclaim:

A passionate soul, a superior spirit,
Who thought to imitate Terence, but who
 announced Racine!
⁵

Notes

¹ See Charles Magnin, Théatre de Hrotsvitha (Paris 1845) for various references to Bodo in this article. No copy of the original was procurable.

²Ibid., p. xviii.

³ E. H. Zevdel, "Reception of Hroswitha by the German Humanists after 1493," Journal of English and Germanic Philology (July 1945), pp. 239-249.

⁴ Quotations from the works of Hroswitha have all been translated by the author from the text of Hrotsvithae Opera, ed., Karolus Strecker (Leipzig 1906).

⁵ For quotation in French see Vignon Retif de la Bretonne, Poesies Latine de Rosvith, avec un traduction libre en vers français (Paris 1854), p. 10.