Hrotsvitha

ROTSVITA - Saxon Benedictine nun and poet, b. ca. 935, d. probably after 973. According to Seidel, the name Hrotsvit is an abbreviation of the secular name Helena von Rossow; others, such as Gottsched, see in it the etymology of "white rose"; in the preface to the collection of her dramas, R. names herself: "Clamor validus Gandeshemensis."

Of noble family, she entered as a young girl the convent of Gandersheim, where a school of Latinity flourished. Under the guidance of Gerberga, niece of Otto the Great, she studied the Latin authors and, after attempts made "clam cunctis et quasi furtim," she became practiced in classical versification.

Of her production, entirely in Latin and which remained ignored after her death, the humanist Conrad Celtes discovered the archetype toward the end of the 15th century in the Benedictine convent of St. Emmeram at Regensburg and gave the first edition of it (Nuremberg 1501, with eight woodcuts by Dürer). Grouped chronologically into three collections, it comprises, besides a poem in hexameters on the deeds of Otto I up to 962 and the narration, also in hexameters, of the origins of her monastery, 8 sacred short poems in Leonine hexameters, 6 one-act plays in rhymed prose and an appendix of 35 verses on episodes of the Apocalypse. Lost is the codex where, by the testimony of the monk Bodone, were contained the lives, also in hexameters, of the holy pontiffs Anastasius and Innocent.

The short poems, of fine workmanship, comprise: the Historia Nativitatis of the Blessed Virgin, derived from the apocryphon of St. James; the Ascensio Domini, derived from a Greek text translated into Latin by Archbishop John; the Passiones of Sts. Gongolf and Pelagius (of the martyrdom of the latter, which occurred at Cordoba under the Saracens, she heard the account from an eyewitness); the Conversio Theophili Vicedomini, judged by Ebert to be the oldest poetic disguise of the Faust legend; Basilus, the narration of a miracle of the Saint; the Passio s. Dionysii; the Passio s. Agnetis, which R. would take as a model for the heroines of her dramas. These, perhaps intended for performance in the convent, are Gallicanus I and II, Dulcitius, Calimachus, Abraham, Pafnutius, Sapientia, and were written, as R. says in the preface, to replace the risqué subjects of Terence's comedies with the «sacrarum castimonia virginum». The material is derived from religious legends of the Acta Sanctorum, faithfully respected; only the plot is expanded with elements suited to enliven the atmosphere of the story, ranging from a tone of fervent dramatic intensity to a grotesque comedy. Nor are there lacking situations and expressions that are rather bold, but free of malice and suggested only by the desire to lend more intense relief to the virtue of the protagonists. R.'s theater is not yet the medieval sacred drama but, having started from the imitation of classical models, remains a new fact for the originality of its form and for the genuine religiosity that pervades it.

1927; partial that of G. Bosio with introd. by S. D'Amico, Milan 1927. Stud.: E. Panzacchi, Spera R., in Saggi critici, Naples 1896, pp. 243-55; Menitius, I, pp. 619-32; F. Ermim, Poeti epici latini del sec. X (with bibl.), Rome 1920, pp. 1-10; M. Rigobon, Il teatro e la latinità di Hrotsvitha, Padua 1932; E. Franceschini, Per una revisione del teatro latino di R., in Rev. ital. del dramma, 2 (1938), pp. 300-16; S. D'Amico, Storia del teatro drammatico, I, Milan 1939, pp. 282-91; C. Grünanger, Einführung in die Geschichte der altgermanischen und der frühdeutschen Dichtung, ibid. 1942, pp. 127-28.

Lanfranco Fiore