Thus does Roswitha tell how the work of the new Foundation was begun, the Duke Liudolf and his wife having already journeyed to Rome to ask of the Pope his blessing, as well as to beg of him, as a token of his favour, some sacred relics to deposit there. The Pope, giving them his blessing, thus makes answer to their request:—
There were here, aforetime, two mighty rulers—the most holy Anastasius who presided over this See, and his co-apostle, the holy Innocent. These, through their services to the Church, were the most famous next after St. Peter and St. Paul. With such care have the illustrious bodies of these two been heretofore preserved by all the rulers of this city, that never has any one been permitted to carry away the least portion of them, and thus their sacred limbs remain undiminished. But forasmuch as it is meet that I yield to your pious request, I will grant you, without recompense, tokens from both these sacred bodies, cut before your very eyes from off the sacred bodies themselves, if so be that you will make solemn oath to me to venerate these relics in your community, of the which you have made mention, preserving them for all time within your Church, sacred hymns being there sung by night and by day, and a light being alway kept burning. And of our apostolic right we ordain, according to your request, that your community be of our See, to the end that it may be secured from all secular rule.
And Liudolf, with glad heart, made promise of this, and returned home with the coveted relics.
The MS., now at Munich, which tells this fascinating story of love and faith, was, it is considered, written about A.D. 1000, and was fortunately preserved in the Benedictine convent of St. Emmeran, Ratisbon, where the scholar and poet, Conrad Celtes, discovered it at the end of the fifteenth century. It also includes metrical legends, a fragment of a panegyric on the Emperor Otho, and six dramas. Of such worth were these latter counted, that when Celtes published the MS. in 1501, Albert Dürer received a commission for an ornamental title-page, and for a frontispiece to each of the plays. It is by these dramas that Roswitha has distinguished herself in the world of letters; for although the legends contain points of interest, and are treated with skill, they are naturally not so unique as the dramas, nor do they reflect her personality in the same way. She herself tells us that the plays were written in imitation of the manner, but not of the matter, of Terence, and that her only desire in writing them was “to make the small talent given her by Heaven to create, under the hammer of devotion, a faint sound to the praise of God.”
But before considering her work, let us glance at her own life, and the life of contemporary Saxon nunneries.
Royal Library, Munich.
COVER OF ST. EMMERAN GOSPELS.
Tenth Century.