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Nearly one hundred and fifty years before the supposed date of Roswitha’s birth, the hitherto untamed and warlike Saxons had been finally defeated by the mercenaries of Charlemagne, and, as one of the signs of submission, forced to embrace Christianity. But having submitted, they forthwith, and with an aptitude suggestive of the spirit of the modern Japanese, set themselves to appropriate, assimilate, and remodel for their own use, the rudiments of the civilisation with which they found themselves brought into contact. So speedy and so thorough was the transformation, that scarce a century passed ere the once powerful Frankish kingdom of Charlemagne bowed down before the strenuous Saxons, to whom the supreme power was transferred. Their Chief was elected king of the Germans, and some fifty years later their king, Otho the Great, after being crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, the former centre of Frankish rule, received the Imperial Crown from the Pope in Rome. This displacement of the political centre was naturally followed by a complete displacement of artistic centres. Both these sides of life were fostered by Otho with a keen personal interest—the building up of his empire and the encouragement of art going hand in hand. Moreover, owing to his close ties with Italy and the East, and the element of classic tradition inevitably induced by such ties, art received an added stimulus and grace. Oriental monks were to be found in the monasteries. Learned men and artists were summoned from Italy and Constantinople. The number and influence of these were increased when Otho’s son, afterwards Otho the Second, married Theophano, a Greek princess, who, bringing many compatriots in her train, sought to reflect in her German home something of the learning and splendour of the Byzantine Court. The ivory, shown in illustration, commemorating this marriage, is an example of the work of some Byzantine craftsman in her employ, whilst the jewelled and gold-wrought cover of the Gospels of St. Emmeran (now at Munich) shows to how high a level the goldsmith’s art of the time had been raised by the influences alluded to.
Musée de Cluny, Paris.
MARRIAGE OF OTHO II. AND THEOPHANO.
Byzantine, 10th century.
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Perhaps the one place which retains in the most varied and concentrated form the traces of this wave of artistic development then passing over Germany, is Hildesheim. This is of interest here because the bishops of Hildesheim were specially appointed to perform the office of consecration of nuns at Gandersheim. It seems hardly possible that Roswitha could have seen its gifted bishop Bernward, himself a painter, and a worker in mosaic and metals, though owing to the uncertainty of the date of her death—one chronicler making it as late as 1002—it is just possible that she may have done so. Bernward’s learning and artistic nature attracted the attention of the princess Theophano, who appointed him tutor to her son, the boy-emperor Otho the Third. Brought thus into touch with the many gifts presented on special occasions to the young Emperor by Greek and Oriental princes, as well as by “Scots” (i.e. Irish missionaries and emigrants settled in Germany), he, by taking with him to Court, from the School of Art established in his palace at Hildesheim, apt and talented youths, made use of these rare and beautiful offerings for the encouragement of the study of divers arts. Students also accompanied him when he went farther afield for study, for it is said of him that there was no art which he did not attempt, even if he failed to attain perfection.[7] Hildesheim thus became famous as a working-centre of fine art, especially in metals, and remained so down to the end of the Middle Ages. After a lapse of nearly a thousand years, the result of the labours of this artistic prelate and his pupils may still be seen in situ as it were. Besides jewelled service-books, there are chalices, incense burners, a gold candelabrum, and a jewelled crucifix, fashioned, if not in part by him, at least under his supervision. The entrance to the Cathedral is beautified with delicately wrought bronze doors, modelled, it may be, from those of Sta. Sabina, Rome, themselves considered to be of Oriental origin,[8] and in the transept rises a column adorned with bronze reliefs from the life of Christ, probably designed by the bishop either after his pilgrimage to Rome in 1001, when he had seen Trajan’s column, or, as a recent writer suggests, from the “Juppiter and giant columns” of Roman Rhineland.[9]
We are tempted to recall other princesses whose marriages, and even more whose personalities, have influenced art and letters, but two must suffice us—the one, the beautiful and cultivated Anne of Bohemia, wife of Richard the Second, whose bridal retinue was in reality a small Court of literary and artistic personages; the other, the brilliant Valentine Visconti of Milan, sister-in-law of King Charles the Sixth of France, whose influence in matters of art and literature alone, at a time when England and France were so intimately associated, makes her of special interest to us.