Judging from Hrotsvith’s writings she worked diligently and soon attracted attention beyond the limits of her convent. The following facts in regard to time are of importance. The first of her two sets of legends was put together and dedicated to Gerberg as abbess, that is after the year 959; she wrote and submitted part if not the whole of her history of Otto the Great to Wilhelm, archbishop of Mainz, before the year 968, in which the prelate died. How the composition of her dramas is related in point of time to that of the legends and the historical poems cannot be definitely decided; probably the dramas were written in the middle period of Hrotsvith’s life. For the legends bear marks of being the outcome of early effort, while the historical poems, especially the one which tells of the early history of Gandersheim, were written in the full consciousness of power. We do not know the date of Hrotsvith’s death; an early chronicle says that she wrote a history of the three Emperors Otto, in which case she must have lived till 1002, that being the year of Otto III’s death. But the annalist to whom we owe this remark may have been misinformed; only a part of the history of the first emperor is extant, and we cannot argue from any references in her other works that she wrote a continuation of it[477]. The nun and her writings soon ceased to attract attention, and there are few references to her in any writings for nearly five hundred years. At the beginning of the 16th century, however, the humanist Conrad Celtes came across a copy of her dramas, which seemed to him so remarkable that he had them printed. And since then they have repeatedly been published, and excellent translations have been made of them into German and French[478].
In the introduction to her plays Hrotsvith appeals to the judgment of powerful patrons, but she does not give their names; in her history, as mentioned above, she asks for criticism from Wilhelm, archbishop of Mainz, who was the illegitimate son of Otto I, and a leading prelate of the time. This exhausts what we know of friends outside the convent; probably the abbess Gerberg was the chief critic throughout and had more influence on her than any other. It was she who introduced Hrotsvith to the works, classical and other, which she had herself studied under learned men, and she was always ready to encourage her able pupil and supply her with materials to work upon.
The library at Gandersheim, to which Hrotsvith had access, contained the writings of a number of classical and theological authors. Among the classical writers with whom the nun is thought to have been directly acquainted were Virgil, Lucan, Horace, Ovid, Terence, and perhaps Plautus; among the Christian writers Prudentius, Sedulius, Fortunatus, Marianus Capella, and Boethius[479]. Ebert, who has analysed the sources from which Hrotsvith drew the subject matter of her legends and dramas, considers that at this time Greek authors were read at Gandersheim in Latin translations only. Another writer, arguing from the fact that the nun frequently uses words of Greek origin, considers that she had some knowledge of Greek[480]. This latter opinion has little in its favour. However we know that Greek teachers were summoned from Constantinople to instruct Hedwig, Gerberg’s sister, who was to have married the Emperor Constantine. The match fell through, but the Saxon royal family aimed steadily at securing an alliance with the court of Constantinople, and ultimately attained this object by the marriage of Otto II to the Greek princess Theofanu (971).
After Hrotsvith had mastered the contents of the library at Gandersheim she was moved to try her hand at writing Latin verse; she cast into metrical form the account of the birth and life of the Virgin Mary contained in a gospel which in some manuscripts is ascribed to St James, the brother of Christ[481]. The story is well told, and the incidents described follow each other naturally; the poem exceeds nine hundred lines in length. She supplements the original text with some amplifications of a descriptive nature and a panegyric on Christ, with which she closes the poem.
The diffidence Hrotsvith felt at first in writing is described in the introduction which she prefixed to the complete collection of her legendary poems and addressed to a wider public[482].
‘Unknown to others and secretly, so to speak, I worked by myself’; she says, ‘sometimes I composed, sometimes I destroyed what I had written to the best of my abilities and yet badly; I dealt with material taken from writings with which I became acquainted within the precincts of our monastery of Gandersheim through the help of our learned and kindly teacher Rikkardis, afterwards through that of others who taught in her place, and finally through that of the high-born abbess Gerberg, under whom I am living at present, who is younger than I am in years but more advanced in learning as befits one of royal lineage, and who has introduced me to various authors whom she has herself studied with the help of learned men. Writing verse appears a difficult and arduous task especially for one of my sex, but trusting to the help of divine grace more than to my own powers, I have fitted the stories of this book to dactylic measures as best I could, for fear that the abilities that have been implanted in me should be dulled and wasted by neglect; for I prefer that these abilities should in some way ring the divine praises in support of devotion; the result may not be in proportion to the trouble taken and yet it may be to the profit of some.’
The nun is filled with the consciousness that her undertaking is no mean one. ‘Full well I know,’ she says, addressing the Virgin, ‘that the task of proclaiming thy merits exceeds my feeble strength, for the whole world could not celebrate worthily that which is a theme of praise among the angels.’ The poem on the life of the Virgin is written in leonine hexameters, that is with rhymes at the middle and the end of the line. This form of verse was sometimes used at that period, and Hrotsvith especially in her later historical poems handled it with considerable skill.
Hrotsvith afterwards added to the account of the Virgin a poem of a hundred and fifty lines on the Ascension of Christ[483]. In this, as she tells us, she adapted an account written by John the Bishop, which had been translated from Greek into Latin.
This poem also is simple and dignified, and gives proof of considerable power of expression on the part of the nun. Her vocabulary however has certain peculiarities, for she is fond of diminutives, a tendency which in the eyes of her editor is peculiarly feminine[484].
The poem on the Ascension closes with the following characteristic lines: ‘Whoever reads this let him exclaim in a forbearing spirit: Holy King, spare and have mercy on the suppliant Hrotsvith and suffer that she who here has been celebrating thy glorious deeds may persevere further in holy song on things divine!’