Hrotsvitha

Hrotsvitha (also spelled Hroswitha or Hrosvit) was a canoness and writer who lived at Gandersheim Abbey, in what is now Lower Saxony, during the Ottonian period. She wrote in Medieval Latin, and she is considered the first woman since late antiquity to compose plays in that language.

Very little is known about her life. She probably came from an aristocratic family and entered Gandersheim as a young woman, a community known for its asceticism and its interest in learning. As a canoness she took vows of chastity and obedience but not of poverty, which allowed her to keep her own property. There she received a careful education, first under the nun Rikkardis and then under Abbess Gerberga, who encouraged her talent. Her name, read as clamor validus, or mighty shout, gave rise to the nickname the Nightingale of Gandersheim.

Her output includes hexameter legends about saints and martyrs, such as Pelagius and Agnes, and the legend of Theophilus, often seen as the first poetic treatment of the Faust story. Her six dialogues, written in response to Terence, present Christian virgins who resist temptation and keep their virtue. She also composed two historical works in Latin, one on the Ottonian dynasty and one on the founding of her abbey. Her poems lay forgotten for centuries until the humanist Conrad Celtes published them in 1501.

For a long time she was almost absent from histories of drama, but today she is studied as one of the earliest female literary voices in Europe and as a direct witness to the Ottonian court. Some feminist scholars have argued that doubts about the authenticity of her work reflect a gender bias rather than any real flaw in the texts.