Ava

AVA. - She is the first German poetess whose name is known to us. Toward the end of the 11th century and the beginning of the 12th she composed a poetic history of the New Testament treating the life of Jesus, the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Last Judgment, which has come down to us in a manuscript from Vorau in Styria. In another manuscript the early history of John the Baptist is also added. A.'s work, composed exclusively for the purpose of spiritual edification, is nothing but a concise and colorless narration of the Gospel events, without artistic pretensions and without exegetical additions, but with much genuine warmth of religious feeling.

A. was identified by Diemer, who first published her works in 1849, as a recluse nun who died on 8 February 1127 near Göttweig in Austria. She is said to have been already married before taking the veil, and to have had two sons who became ecclesiastics, from whom, as she herself states, she received the material of the two poems.

Bruno Vignola