It was from this sister that the nun received her information about Wunebald. The theory has been put forward that she was the same person as a nun who came to Heidenheim and was there miraculously cured. However that may be, this literary nun is the last Anglo-Saxon woman of whom we have definite information who came abroad in connection with Boniface. Her name is lost, it is as the anonymous nun of Heidenheim that she has come down to posterity.
CHAPTER V.
CONVENTS IN SAXON LANDS BETWEEN A.D. 800-1000.
‘Nec scientia scibilis Deum offendit, sed injustitia scientis.’ Hrotsvith.
§ 1. Women’s Convents in Saxony.
Some account has been given in the preceding chapters of the form which monastic settlements of women took among the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons during the first centuries after the acceptance of Christianity. Features similar to those which appear in France and England characterised the first period of monastic development among the continental Saxons, the last branch of the German race to accept Christianity as a nation. Here also we find highborn and influential women as abbesses at the head of establishments which were important centres of contemporary culture.
The convent in Saxon lands, as elsewhere, was a place of residence and a training school for women of the ruling classes. Girls came there to be educated, and either considered the convent as their permanent home or left it to be married; the widow frequently returned to it later in life. But some of the Saxon settlements of women gained an additional importance in the 10th and 11th centuries owing to their close connection with the political affairs and interests of the time. The abbess was frequently a member of the royal or imperial family. In one case she was appointed as the guardian of the Emperor, in another she became representative of the Emperor during his absence in Italy.
The story of the spread of monastic life into Saxony is closely connected with the history of the conquest of the country and the subsequent growth of national independence. The Saxons occupied the districts of northern Germany, Westphalia, Eastphalia and Engern, of which Westphalia bordered on lands occupied by the Franks. Between the 6th and the 9th centuries the Franks had sometimes fought against the Saxons and had sometimes made common cause with them against their mutual enemies the people of Thüringen. But the Saxons were warlike and ferocious, insensible to the influence of Christianity, and ready at any moment to begin hostilities. They became more and more dreaded by the Franks, who looked upon them as dangerous neighbours, and who attacked them whenever opportunity offered. Karl the Great († 814), king of the Franks, and Roman Emperor of the German nation, received the war against the Saxons as part of his heritage, but repeated inroads into Saxony and a cruelty bordering on vindictiveness were needed before he could speak of the conquest of the Saxons as an accomplished fact. In 785, after a prolonged struggle, Widukind, the Saxon leader in whom the spirit of Arminius lived, was finally defeated; and he and his followers accepted Christianity as part of their subjection.