His voluminous works, many of which remain unpublished, comprise commentaries on a considerable number of the books both of canonical and of apocryphal Scripture (Genesis to Judges, Ruth, Kings, Chronicles, Judith, Esther, Canticles, Proverbs, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Maccabees, Matthew, the Epistles of St Paul, including Hebrews); and various treatises relating to doctrinal and practical subjects, including more than one series of Homilies. Perhaps the most important is that De institutione clericorum, in three books, by which he did much to bring into prominence the views of Augustine and Gregory the Great as to the training which was requisite for a right discharge of the clerical function; the most popular has been a comparatively worthless tract De laudibus sanctae crucis. Among the others may be mentioned the De universo libri xxii., sive etymologiarum opus, a kind of dictionary or encyclopaedia, designed as a help towards the historical and mystical interpretation of Scripture, the De sacris ordinibus, the De disciplina ecclesiastica and the Martyrologium. All of them are characterized by erudition (he knew even some Greek and Hebrew) rather than by originality of thought. The poems are of singularly little interest or value, except as including one form of the “Veni Creator.” In the annals of German philology a special interest attaches to the Glossaria Latino-Theodisca. A commentary, Super Porphyrium, printed by Cousin in 1836 among the Ouvrages inédits d’Abélard, and assigned both by that editor and by Hauréau to Hrabanus Maurus, is now generally believed to have been the work of a disciple.
The first nominally complete edition of the works of Hrabanus Maurus was that of Colvener (Cologne, 6 vols. fol., 1627). The Opera omnia form vols. cvii.-cxii. of Migne’s Patrologiae cursus completus. The De universo is the subject of Compendium der Naturwissenschaften an der Schule zu Fulda im IX. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1880). Maurus is the subject of monographs by Schwarz (De Rhabano Mauro primo Germaniae praeceptore, 1811), Kunstmann (Historische Monographie über Hrabanus Magnentius Maurus, 1841), Spengler (Leben des heil. Rhabanus Maurus, 1856) and Köhler (Rhabanus Maurus u. die Schule zu Fulda, 1870). Lives by his disciple Rudolphus and by Joannes Trithemius are printed in the Cologne edition of the Opera. See also Pertz, Monum. Germ. Hist. (i. and ii.); Bähr, Gesch. d. römischen Literatur im Karoling. Zeitalter (1840), and Hauck’s article in the Herzog-Hauck Realencyklopädie, ed. 3.
HRÓLFR KRAKI, perhaps the most famous of the Danish kings of the heroic age. In Beowulf, where he is called Hrothwulf, he is represented as reigning over Denmark in conjunction with his uncle Hrothgar, one of the three sons of an earlier king called Healfdene. In the Old Norse sagas Hrólfe is the son of Helgi (Halga), the son of Halfdan (Healfdene). He is represented as a wealthy and peace-loving monarch similar to Hrothgar in Beowulf, but the latter (Hróarr, or Roe) is quite overshadowed by his nephew in the Northern authorities. The chief incidents in Hrólfr’s career are the visit which he paid to the Swedish king Aðils (Beowulf’s Eadgils), of which several different explanations are given, and the war, in which he eventually lost his life, against his brother-in-law Hiörvarðr. The name Kraki (pole-ladder) is said to have been given to him on account of his great height by a young knight named Vöggr, whom he handsomely rewarded and who eventually avenged his death on Hiörvarðr. There is no reason to doubt that Hrólfr was an historical person and that he reigned in Denmark during the early years of the 6th century, but the statement found in all the sagas that he was the stepson of Aðils seems hardly compatible with the evidence of Beowulf, which is a much earlier authority.
See Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, pp. 52-68, ed. A. Holder (Strassburg, 1886); and A. Olrik, Danmarks Hettedigtning (Copenhagen, 1903).
HROSVITHA (frequently Roswitha, and properly Hrotsuit), early medieval dramatist and chronicler, occupies a very notable position in the history of modern European literature. Her endeavours formed part of the literary activity by which the age of the emperor Otto the Great sought to emulate that of Charles the Great. The famous nun of Gandersheim has occasionally been confounded with her namesake, a learned abbess of the same convent, who must have died at least half a century earlier. The younger Hrosvitha was born in all probability about the year 935; and, if the statement be correct that she sang the praises of the three Ottos, she must have lived to near the close of the century. Some time before the year 959 she entered the Benedictine nunnery of Gandersheim, a foundation which was confined to ladies of German birth, and was highly favoured by the Saxon dynasty. In 959 Gerberga, daughter of Duke Henry of Bavaria and niece of the emperor Otto I., was consecrated abbess of Gandersheim; and the earlier literary efforts of the youthful Hrosvitha (whose own connexion with the royal family appears to be an unauthenticated tradition) were encouraged by the still more youthful abbess, and by a nun of the name of Richarda.
The literary works of Hrosvitha, all of which were as a matter of course in Latin, divide themselves into three groups. Of these the first and least important comprises eight narrative religious poems, in leonine hexameters or distichs. Their subjects are the Nativity of the Virgin (from the apocryphal gospel of St James, the brother of our Lord), the Ascension and a series of legends of saints (Gandolph, Pelagius, Theophilus, Basil, Denis, Agnes). Like these narrative poems, the dramas to which above all Hrosvitha owes her fame seem to have been designed for reading aloud or recitation by sisters of the convent. For though there are indications that the idea of their representation was at least present to the mind of the authoress, the fact of such a representation appears to be an unwarrantable assumption. The comedies of Hrosvitha are six in number, being doubtless in this respect also intended to recall their nominal model, the comedies of Terence. They were devised on the simple principle that the world, the flesh and the devil should not have all the good plays to themselves. The experiment upon which the young Christian dramatist ventured was accordingly, although not absolutely novel, audacious enough. In form the dramas of “the strong voice of Gandersheim,” as Hrosvitha (possibly alluding to a supposed etymology of her name) calls herself, are by no means Terentian. They are written in prose, with an element of something like rhythm, and an occasional admixture of rhyme. In their themes, and in the treatment of these, they are what they were intended to be, the direct opposites of the lightsome adapter of Menander. They are founded upon legends of the saints, selected with a view to a glorification of religion in its supremest efforts and most transcendental aspects. The emperor Constantine’s daughter, for example, Constantia, gives her hand in marriage to Gallicanus, just before he starts on a Scythian campaign, though she has already taken a vow of perpetual maidenhood. In the hour of battle he is himself converted, and, having on his return like his virgin bride chosen the more blessed unmarried state, dies as a Christian martyr in exile. The three holy maidens, Agape, Chionia and Irene, are preserved by a humorous miracle from the evil designs of Dulcitius, to offer up their pure lives as a sacrifice under Diocletian’s persecutions. Callimachus, who has Romeo-like carried his earthly passion for the saintly Drusiana into her tomb, and among its horrors has met with his own death, is by the mediation of St John raised with her from the dead to a Christian life. All these themes are treated with both spirit and skill, often with instinctive knowledge of dramatic effect—often with genuine touches of pathos and undeniable felicities of expression. In Dulcitius there is also an element of comedy, or rather of farce. How far Hrosvitha’s comedies were an isolated phenomenon of their age in Germany must remain undecided; in the general history of the drama they form the visible bridge between the few earlier attempts at utilizing the forms of the classical drama for Christian purposes and the miracle plays. They are in any case the productions of genius; nor has Hrosvitha missed the usual tribute of the supposition that Shakespeare has borrowed from her writings.
The third and last group of the writings of Hrosvitha is that of her versified historical chronicles. At the request of the abbess Gerberga, she composed her Carmen de gestis Oddonis, an epic attempting in some degree to follow the great Roman model. It was completed by the year 968, and presented by the authoress to both the old emperor and his son (then already crowned as) Otto II. This poem so closely adheres to the materials supplied to the authoress by members of the imperial family that, notwithstanding its courtly omissions, it is regarded as an historical authority. Unfortunately only half of it remains; the part treating of the period from 953 to 962 is lost with the exception of a few fragments, and the period from 962 to 967 is summarized only. Subsequently, in a poem (of 837 hexameters) De primordiis et fundatoribus coenobii Gandersheimensis, Hrosvitha narrated the beginnings of her own convent, and its history up to the year 919.
The Munich MS., which contains all the works enumerated above except the Chronicle of Gandersheim, was edited by the great Vienna humanist, Conrad Celtes, in 1501. The edition of Celtes was published at Nuremberg, with eight wood-cuts by Albrecht Dürer. It was re-edited by H. L. Schurzfleisch and published at Wittenberg in 1707. The comedies have been edited and translated into German by J. Bendixen (Lübeck, 1857), and into French by C. Magnin (Paris, 1845), whose introduction gives a full account of the authoress and her works. See also her Poésies latines, with a translation into French verse by V. Rétif de la Bretonne (Paris, 1854). A copious analysis of her plays will be found in Klein, Geschichte des Dramas, iii. 665-754. See also W. Creizenach, Geschichte des neueren Dramas, i. 17 sqq. (Halle, 1893), and A. W. Ward, History of English Dramatic Literature, i. 6 sqq. (Cambridge, 1899). Gustav Freytag wrote a dissertation, De Rosuitha poëtria (Breslau, 1839), to qualify himself as an academical teacher, which, as he records (Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, Leipzig, 1887, p. 1839), showed “how impossible it was to the German, a thousand years since, to compose dramatically”; and at the beginning of Albert Cohn’s Shakespeare in Germany (Berlin, 1865) Shakespearean parallels are suggested to certain passages in Hrosvitha’s dramas. Her two chronicles in verse were edited by Z. H. Pertz in the Monumenta Germaniae, iv. 306-335 (Hanover, 1841). See also J. P. Migne, Patrologiae curs. compl. (Paris, 1853, vol. 137). The Carmen was included by Leibnitz in his Scriptores rer. Brunsvic. (Hanover, 1707-1711). For other early editions of these see A. Potthast, Bibliotheca historica medii aevi (supplement, Berlin, 1862-1868); and for an appreciation of them see Wattenbach, Geschichtsquellen, pp. 214-216, and Giesebrecht, Deutsche Kaiserzeit, i. 780, who mentions a German translation by Pfund (1860). There is a complete edition of the works of Hrosvitha by K. A. Barack (Nürnberg, 1858). J. Aschbach (1867) attempted to prove that Celtes had forged the productions which he published under the name of Hrosvitha, but he was refuted by R. Köpke (Berlin, 1869). Anatole France, La Vie littéraire (3ème série, Paris, 1891), cited by Creienach, mentions a curious recent experiment, the performance of Hrosvitha’s comedies in the Théâtre des Marionettes at Paris.