1501 [HROSWITHA of GANDERSHEIM] Opera Hrosvite illustris virginis et monialis Germane gente Saxonica orte nuper a Conrado Celte inventa. Norunbergæ: Sub privilegio sodalitis Celticæ, 1501....

1501 [HROSWITHA of GANDERSHEIM] Opera Hrosvite illustris virginis et monialis Germane gente Saxonica orte nuper a Conrado Celte inventa. Norunbergæ: Sub privilegio sodalitis Celticæ, 1501. Small folio. 82 leaves, without pagination. Hrotsvitha (c. 935-1002), also known as Hroswitha, Hrotsvit, Hrosvit, and Roswitha, was a 10th-century German secular canoness, as well as a dramatist and poet who lived and worked in Abbey of Gandersheim, in modern-day Lower Saxony, a community of secular canonesses. She was noted for her great learning and was introduced to Roman Writers by Gerberg. Hrotsvit's work shows familiarity, not only with the Church fathers, but also with Classical poetry, including Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Plautus and Terence (on whom her own verse was modelled). Several of her plays draw on the so-called apocryphal gospels. Her works form part of the Ottonian Renaissance. The Benedictine Rule was relaxed for her and other aristocratic women who joined the order; they were not required to take the vow of poverty. Two Abbesses in her time were nieces of the ruling Emperor with the status of Imperial Princes. The frontispiece of the book, a Durer engraving, shows Hroswitha presenting her manuscript to the Emperor Otto I. The book was edited and seen through the press by the Imperial Poet Laureate, Conrad Celtes, who in 1493 had discovered a copy, still extanct, of the Mss in the Benedictine Monastery of St. Emmeram in Regensburg. Hrosvit divided her work herself into three books. The Book of Legends contained eight legends - with the exception of Gangolf - in dactylic hexameter - the writing style that is most prominent in poetry and can be found in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Her plays feature the chastity and perseverance of Christian women and contrast these to the perceived Latin portrayal of women as weak and emotional. Her Passio Sancti Pelagii is derived, she says, from an eyewitness to the martyrdom of Pelagius of Cordova. Her name, as she herself attests, is Saxon for ''strong voice.'' Hroswitha wrote in Latin, and is considered by some to be the first person since antiquity to compose drama in the Latin West Provenance: The estate of Tony Sweeney

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