#hrosvitha

The name Hrosvitha in German can be translated into as “one with a strong voice.” Hrosvitha of Gandersheim was a medieval play write from the tenth century. She had a very strong opinionated voice and was not one to skirt away from sharing her ideas. Her personal life is unknown and full of controversies but her ideas and voice live on through the scripts, poetry, and essays that she is accredited with writing. Hrosvitha wrote about Christian women and the themes of her work are feministic and liberating for women of the time. She is believed to hold influence with her works during the Ottonian Empire and speculated that they were performed for the Ottonian courts. Hrosvitha’s works also had a direct influence on the ladies residing in the abbey alongside Hrosvitha. She worked hard not only to empower women in the church but also spread the message to the women of that time. 

Hrosvitha’s personal life is lost history. Not much was recorded about her personal life as she grew up but what we know comes from the records in the abbey’s and her found surviving works. It is speculated that she was born sometime around the early 930s and lived past the 970s, as that is her last found dated work. All we know is what she wrote in the prefaces of her plays. “Within her last epic, Primorida, she states that Otto I died long before her birth and that she was older than her abbess and friend, Gerberga. This does not provide us with her actual date of birth, but places it well after 912 and sometime before 940.” (Bonds 8) We know that Hrosvitha was at the abbey in Gandersheim, a small village today located in Germany. During that time it was a part of the Ottonian empire. “It had been established in the 9th century by Duke Liudolf and his wife and her mother as a "free abbey," not connected to the hierarchy of the church but to the local ruler.  In 947, Otto I freed the abbey completely, so that it was also not subject to a secular rule.”(Jone Johnson Lewis) The abbey itself had ties to the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I the Great but it unclear if Hrosvitha herself had any royalties or upbringing.  As Hrosvitha stayed in the abbey her life was very free. She was a canoness of the abbey and not a nun. Her vows were that of chastity and devotion but not one of poverty. She enjoyed all the luxuries one living in a convent could enjoy. From an analysis of her works, one could assume that she was well taught and read lots of works.

Her plays are known by many differently translated names but the six discovered plays are mainly known as Abraham, Callimachus, Dulcitis, Gallicanus, Paphnutius, and Sapienta. Almost all of her works focus around Women and their standard roles in society. Tara Bonds talks about Hrosvitha in her doctoral dissertation and states that Hrosvitha’s works were revolutionary for her time.

“She wanted to present stories that she hoped women of her time would want to read; stories of women they could admire... Hrotsvit rendered stories with female subjectivity. Her female characters were the polar opposites of their counterparts in Terence’s plays; they knew autonomy of spirit, righteous confidence in their words and deeds, and due respect paid to their thoughts and opinions. (Bonds 128)”

Hrosvitha tried hard to change the way women were viewed in her works. Her works were only showed to the women in her abbey and she tried to change the way the women in the abbey viewed themselves. Not as silent background characters to a man's story, but to view themselves as martyrs, people who have a voice worth hearing. Thoughts are meant to be spoken and shared, not kept in the minds where they originate.

Most Christian ladies in stories of this time and before portrayed women to be dependent on a man, women who could only gain strength or knowledge from their father or their husband. All of her female characters are strong in their own right regardless of their interaction with men in the plays. The strength of the female characters come from upholding their vows and unwavering faith in Christianity.

Hrosvitha was also known for her comedy aspects of her plays. In her play Dulcitius one of the male characters goes insane with lust for the females. But instead of pursuing the ladies in the other room, the character Dulcitius becomes entranced by the kitchen's pots and pans.

Irena. Oh, look! He must be out of his senses! I believe he thinks that he is kissing us.

Agape. What is he doing?

Irena. Now he presses the saucepans tenderly to his breast, now the kettles and frying pans! He is kissing them hard! (Dulcitius, 39)

The humor of the time is very slap-stick and situational. Most compare it directly to the influences and comedy of Terence. Historians assume that there was a collection of his plays in the abbey that Hrosvitha worked off of. She simply improved upon them to be more relatable and greater roles for the women in the plays.

All of her works are recorded down in Latin, as this was the universal language for scholars at the time. “Because of allusions in the writing to Ovid, Terence, Virgil, and Horace, we can conclude that the convent included a library with these works.”(Jone Johnson Lewis) Hrosvitha is credited with writing the history of the abbey, six plays and eight poems. One of those poems was to honor Otto The Great. Historians assume that her works were only written for the enjoyment of those inside of the Abbey but others think they could have been performed for the royal court.

The abbey that gave her the freedom to write her thoughts can also be attributed to her works not circulating. The abbey of Gandersheim that Hrosvitha lived and worked in burned down around the year 971.  All her writing was lost and all the books she had read to advance her knowledge was also lost in the fire. Due to this tragic event, her works were not spread to those outside of the abbey during her time on earth. Hrosvitha works were rediscovered in the fifteen hundreds, but they were not translated from the original Latin to English until the nineteen-twenties. Hrosvitha works are not recognized today as the revolutionary works of the tenth century.