Wailes - Flesh and Spirit in The Plays of Hrotsvit

Beyond Virginity: Flesh and Spirit in the Plays of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim
Author(s): Stephen L. Wailes

Source: Speculum, Vol. 76, No. 1 (Jan., 2001), pp. 1-27
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Medieval Academy of
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Beyond Virginity: Flesh and Spirit
in the Plays of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim
By Stephen L. Wailes
For half a century an essay by Hugo Kuhn, "Hrotsviths von Gandersheim dichteri-
sches Programm," has stood fast against rebuttal in arguing that a complex set of
connections, thematic and formal, links all of Hrotsvit's work.1 For Kuhn, the
question of a dramatic program is subsumed under that of a comprehensive lit-
erary program manifest in Hrotsvit's six dramas, eight legends, two narrative po-
ems, and thirty-five hexameters describing scenes from the Revelation of John.2
The impact of this essay-the single most influential piece of Hrotsvit interpre-
tation-owes at least as much to Kuhn's power of presentation as to close analysis,
of which there is little. He writes apodictically, as when identifying virginity as
Hrotsvit's basic theme: "Durch alle sechs [Dramen] ziehen sich gleiche Motive
hindurch. Vor allem die virginitas als Grundthema" (p. 94); he discovers bold and
plausible patterns: each play has its own "Hauptthema," as well as a "Seiten-
motiv" (also called "Seitenthema" or "Nebenmotiv," pp. 94-95), which can be-
come the "Hauptthema" of a following play; the "Hauptthema" of the dramas is
"der Heilskreis der Jungfrauen und Bii3erinnen" (p. 102, apparently consistent
with Kuhn's idea of virginity as the dramatic "Grundthema"); the plays, centered
on women, develop thematically in parallel with the male-oriented legends. Kuhn
moves swiftly from one work to another, and most scholars have followed him
admiringly. Peter Dronke declares that "Hrotsviths dichterisches Programm" is
"a superb essay" and makes it the foundation of his own argument for Hrotsvit's
plays and legends as "a single magnum opus, with vast and elaborate internal
symmetries. "3
The best-known component of Hrotsvit's work is her group of dramas. Trans-
1 First published in Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift fir Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 24

(1950), 181-96; reprinted in the first volume of Kuhn's Kleinere Schriften, Dichtung und Welt im
Mittelalter, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 1969), pp. 91-104, quoted in this paper. I have chosen to use as titles
for four of the plays the names of the heroines, hence Agape, Chiona, and Hirena (for Dulcitius),
Drusiana (for Calimachus), Maria (for Abraham), and Thais (for Pafnutius), while retaining the tra-
ditional titles for Gallicanus and Sapientia. (See n. 21 below on the authenticity of the prose summaries
preceding the plays in the manuscript, which appear to provide titles.)
I am grateful to both of Speculum's anonymous readers of this essay for their careful and perceptive
criticisms.
2 For background on Hrotsvit and her plays, see Fidel Radle, "Hrotsvit von Gandersheim," in Die
deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, 2nd ed. (Berlin and New York, 1978-), 4:196-
210, and Katharina Wilson, The Plays of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (New York, 1989), "Introduction."
The edition by H. Homeyer, Hrotsvithae opera (Munich, 1970), quoted in this paper, remains impor-
tant for its philological and critical commentaries.
3 Peter Dronke, "Hrotsvitha," in his Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts
from Perpetua (t 203) to Marguerite Porete (t 1310) (Cambridge, Eng., 1984), pp. 55-83 and 293-
97, at p. 60.
Speculum 76 (2001) 1
2 Hrotsvit of Gandersheim
mitted together in an authoritative manuscript, consistent in form and style (a
quasi-Terentian succession of scenes in Latin rhymed prose), unified by an opti-
mistic philosophical and theological world view (Legendendenken),4 and intro-
duced by the author in a substantial preface, they lend themselves to studies from
a programmatic perspective and to such generalizations as Kuhn advanced. These
have become part of the scholarly consensus, which declares that the plays are
really about sexual purity, virginitas. From the early response to Kuhn's ideas in
Bert Nagel's 1965 monograph on Hrotsvit down to Judith Tarr's handbook entries
of recent date, scholars have endorsed Kuhn's proposition: writing about Hrots-
vit's "Hauptthemata," Nagel states that in her first legend "Hrotsvit [gestaltete]
ihr zentrales Thema: die Virginitit" (p. 54), and since the plays agree very closely
with the legends in theme and purpose ("Die 'Dramen' sind also dialogisierte
Legenden," pp. 55-56), virginity is their central theme as well; Barbara Patzold
calls virginity the "red thread" that runs through nearly all the legends and dra-
mas; and Tarr finds sexual purity at the thematic center of all these works ("the
plays and legends seem to have been put together according to a single overriding
purpose, as a cycle of works on related themes: perpetual and triumphant virginity
above all").5
Hrotsvit's preface to the plays lends a degree of support to this interpretation,
if taken at face value, for she deplores the fact that many Christian readers love
Terence for the "mellifluence of the style" and, reading his plays, "are tainted by
coming to know an impious subject matter"; she asserts that her plays are to
provide an alternative literature, imitating for the reader's pleasure Terence's style
and composition ("imitari dictando," "eodem dictationis genere") but substitut-
ing "the laudable chastity of holy maidens" for his "unchaste actions of sensual
women."6 (Note that her phrase here is "laudabilis sacrarum castimonia vir-
ginum," in which castimonia means "chastity," not "virginity," and virgines can
as well be young women as virgins.) There is no agreement, however, on the degree
to which one may take Hrotsvit's preface at face value, for it embodies several
rhetorical strategies for gaining acceptance and deflecting criticism. Dronke takes
an extreme position, commenting on Hrotsvit's "astonishing tactics in her Preface
to the plays, where she says little of what she really means and means almost
nothing of what she says." He particularly rejects her statements about sexuality
and Terence as moral danger and the behavior of her heroines as uplifting ex-
4 The term "Legendendenken" is from Friedrich Neumann, "Der Denkstil Hrotsvits von Ganders-
heim," in Festschrift fur Hermann Heimpel zum 70. Geburtstag am 19. September 1971, 3 vols.
(Gottingen, 1971-72), 3:37-60.
5 Bert Nagel, Hrotsvit von Gandersheim (Stuttgart, 1965), p. 64; Barbara Patzold, "Hrotsvit von
Gandersheim: Lebensnormen und Wertvorstellungen," in Herrscherinnen und Nonnen: Frauengestal-
ten von der Ottonenzeit bis zu den Staufen (Berlin, 1990), pp. 17-42, at p. 31: "Das in der Marien-
Legende begriindete Ideal der Jungfraulichkeit ... [zieht] sich wie ein roter Faden durch fast alle
Legenden und Dramen"; and Judith Tarr, "Hrotsvit of Gandersheim," in An Encyclopedia of Conti-
nental Women Writers, ed. Katharina M. Wilson, 2 vols. (New York, 1991), 1:445-47, at p. 446.
Tarr's essay also appears in Women Writers of Great Britain and Europe: An Encyclopedia, ed. Ka-
tharina M. Wilson, Paul Schlueter, and June Schlueter (New York, 1997), pp. 207-8.
6 Dronke's translations in Women Writers, p. 69.
Hrotsvit of Gandersheim 3
ample-"none of what Hrotsvitha claims, ostensibly solemnly, at the opening of

this Preface can conceivably be literally true."7
One may not say that Hrotsvit dissimulated in the preface, but I think she veiled
the truth in terms that were to make their sexuality acceptable, if not inoffensive.
Her heroines, like other women, must confront the reality of sexual desire in
others, and sometimes in themselves; unlike Terence's characters, they have a struc-
ture of values within which sexuality will finally find its rightful place, subordi-
nated to the spiritual-and this subordination I take to be the laudabilis casti-
monia that is indeed evident in each play. Two plays do celebrate martyrs who
happen to be virgins, but (I will argue) it is not their virginity but their steadfast
faith that is celebrated. These two groups of three young girls represent one pole
of the concept laudabilis castimonia; the other is represented by the two prosti-
tutes, whose sexual sin must be purged but whose salvation depends, not on rou-
tine purgation, but on changes within their spirits. Hrotsvit understood sexual
desire and behavior to be merely one aspect of the carnality of human beings, and
her plays present it as no more than that. In fact, Hrotsvit is much more interested
in other aspects of human carnality than she is in sexuality. The plays have a
common theme, but it is not Kuhn's virginitas, Tarr's "perpetual and triumphant
virginity." The theme of the plays is the conflict of flesh and spirit, familiar to all
from Paul's statement in Galatians: "caro enim concupiscit adversus spiritum /
spiritus autem adversus carnem / haec enim invicem adversantur" (5.17; "For the
desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against
the flesh; for these are opposed to each other").8
It is almost embarrassing to say as much, because this conflict is such a basic
part of the medieval Christian worldview, so deep set and ubiquitous in the men-
tality of medieval writers, that to propose it as a theme seems superficial, even
trivial. Dulcitius sets out to rape the pious virgins Agape, Chionia, and Hirena:
the conflict would not seem to need glossing! Yet the matter is not so simple, for
Paul understood the tension between flesh and spirit to be far more than the
straining of our bodies against discipline. Although his placement of fornicatio,
inmunditia, and luxuria at the start of his list of works of the flesh ("opera carnis,"
Gal. 5.19-21) and its conclusion with ebrietates and comestationes support this
narrow interpretation, Paul did not understand "flesh" (caro) as the body (cor-
pus), and he therefore included among the flesh's works many forms of sin that
are spiritual in character, among them idolatry, wrath, and envy (idolorum ser-
vitus, irae, invidiae, Gal. 5.20-21). The flesh prevails when people fornicate, to
be sure, but also when they are angry or envious. Readers of Hrotsvit's plays have
been misled by the sexuality in her plots to think that this is her theme, but one
must look deeper. For example, the two plays with prostitutes as heroines are not
about prostitution; they are not even about sexual morality. Intercourse outside
7 Ibid., pp. 68-69. Although Dronke's revisionist reading of the heroines Maria and Thais is con-
genial to me, he overstates the case by calling them "zestfully lascivious" (p. 70), if that implies
nonchalance. Both women are deeply grieved by the sexual profligacy they have been powerless to
avoid.
81 quote the Vulgate Bible edited by Robertus Weber, 3rd ed. (Stuttgart, 1983), and the Revised
Standard Version in English.
marriage was a sin that, in itself, did not much interest Hrotsvit, but despair, to
which Maria nearly succumbs, is the gravest spiritual danger and is the problem
of her play. Their own faulty understanding of their sexual delicts causes Maria
and Thais to turn away from God and so, in self-obsession, to side with the flesh.
Their spiritual movement and its reversal are far more important than their cop-
ulations. The conflict of flesh and spirit in these plays is not the superficial clash
of promiscuity and abstinence.
Augustine of Hippo provided a commentary on Paul's ideas in the course of
The City of God which is very important for reading Hrotsvit's plays. The influ-
ence of this vast text on medieval culture is undeniable, if difficult to chart closely.
My concern is with the intellectual heritage available to Hrotsvit in her tenth-
century German cloister, and here the great Benedictine scholar and teacher Ra-
banus Maurus (ob. 856) is important. The City of God is a prime source for
Rabanus at crucial points in his commentaries on 1 Corinthians and on Galatians;
his authority and popularity as an exegete make it virtually certain that, at the
very least, Augustine's statements in The City of God on the works of the flesh
(Galatians 5), which Rabanus quoted, were familiar to the learned women and
men around Hrotsvit, and therefore to her.9
In book 14 Augustine writes that "there is ... one city of men who choose to
live by the standard of the flesh, another of those who choose to live by the
standard of the spirit" (14.1; "Vna [ciuitas] quippe est hominum secundum car-
nem, altera secundum spiritum"), and he observes that the meaning of the words
"flesh" and "spirit" is not patent. In order to understand what it means to live by
one standard or the other, he turns to Paul in Galatians 5 and emphasizes that
"faults of the mind" (14.2; "animi uitia") are central to the concept of flesh: "For
anyone can see that devotion to idols, sorcery, enmity, quarrelsomeness, jealousy,
animosity, party intrigue, envy-all these are faults of the mind, not of the body"
(14.2; "Quis enim seruitutem, quae idolis exhibetur, ueneficia, inimicitias, conten-
tiones, aemulationes, animositates, dissensiones, haereses, inuidias non potius in-
tellegat animi uitia esse quam carnis?"). The distinction is then made between
9 In this essay I cite De civitate Dei from the edition by Bernhard Dombart and Alfons Kalb in
Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, 47-48 (Turnhout, 1955), and the English translation (Concern-
ing the City of God against the Pagans) by Henry Bettenson (Harmondsworth, Eng., 1972). Rabanus's
commentary on Galatians is printed in PL 112:245-382, and his commentary on 1 Corinthians ibid.,
cols. 245-382. His long quotation from The City of God (14.2-3), explicating Gal. 5.19, is in cols.
353B-354A. Rabanus studied with Alcuin at Tours, and we are told in Alcuin's life of Charlemagne
that the great emperor had a special fondness for The City of God: "Delectabatur et libris sancti
Augustini, praecipueque his qui de civitate Dei praetitulati sunt (He also enjoyed the books of St.
Augustine, especially The City of God)," Vita Karoli Magni, ed. and trans. E. S. Firchow and E. H.
Zeydel (Dudweiler, 1985), c. 24, pp. 90-91. Alcuin may have promoted study of this work by his
pupil, and the example of Charlemagne's fondness may have influenced the Ottonians to know it, as
they were eager to emulate their predecessor's ways. Augustine has been drawn into discussion of
Hrotsvit, but not along the lines I propose: see, for example, Katharina M. Wilson on Hrotsvit in
Medieval Women Writers, ed. Katharina M. Wilson (Athens, Ga., 1984), p. 37, without naming Au-
gustine: "The city of God (civitas dei) is contrasted both in hagiographic and historic contexts with
the city of the devil (civitas diaboli)." See also Eril Hughes, "Augustinian Elements in Hrotsvit's Plays,"
in Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: Rara avis in Saxonia? ed. Katharina M. Wilson (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1987),
pp. 63-70, using other ideas and works of Augustine.
living by man's standard or by God's: "two cities, different and mutually opposed,
owe their existence to the fact that some men live by the standard of the flesh,
others by the standard of the spirit.... [W]e may also put it in this way: that some
live by man's standard, others by God's" (14.4; "Quod itaque diximus, hinc ex-
titisse duas ciuitates diuersas inter se atque contrarias, quod alii secundum carnem,
alii secundum spiritum uiuerent"). Rabanus presents this dualism in his commen-
tary on 1 Corinthians as that of the carnal (or animal) man and the spiritual man.
He quotes The City of God 14.4, "Quid est ambulare secundum hominem, hoc
est esse carnalem" (31AB; "to behave according to human standards is the same
as to be 'of the flesh' "); "ab anima namque et a carne quae sunt partes hominis
potest totum significari" (31B; "For anima [the soul] and caro [the flesh] are parts
of a man, and can stand for man in his entirety"). Discussing Galatians, he draws
most heavily on The City of God (14.2-3) "to answer the question of what is
meant by 'living by the rule of the flesh'" (14.2; "quid sit secundum carnem
uiuere," cf. col. 353C); in his answer Rabanus emphasizes the crucial point that
to live by the rule of the flesh may entail "faults of the mind, which have nothing
to do with sensual indulgence" (14.3; "animi uitia ... a uoluptate carnis aliena,"
cf. col. 353C).
Rabanus thus helps to mediate Augustine's conception of two human groups,
itself founded on Paul's distinction of flesh and spirit, to medieval Europe, and we
should consider how this conception may have influenced the Ottonian philoso-
phy of history, specifically the understanding of the Roman Empire over which
Otto the Great formally presided. Augustine did not in principle equate the two
civitates with historical states, but his phraseology allowed the inference to be
drawn that pagan Rome was the capital of the civitas terrena and Christian Rome
that of the civitas Dei. He identifies the pagan Roman Empire as "the society
whose common aim is worldly advantage or the satisfaction of desire, the com-
munity which we call by the general name of 'the city of this world' " (18.2; "regna
terrarum, in quae terrenae utilitatis uel cupiditatis est diuisa societas [quam ciui-
tatem mundi huius uniuersali uocabulo nuncupamus]"). This empire arose as "a
kind of second Babylon" after the decline of the Assyrians (18.22; "condita est
ciuitas Roma uelut altera Babylon"), in accord with God's will, to extend law and
peace throughout the world. The pagan Roman Empire had its kind of excellence;
but since the birth and resurrection of Christ, it has constituted the earthly city in
tension with "those who believe in Christ, the City of God."10
Otto had been crowned emperor in Rome by the pope. The Ottonians under-
stood Otto to be the successor to Charlemagne, who also had been crowned in
Rome by the pope and in whose court the idea of the empire's "renewal" (reno-
vatio Romani Imperii) flourished.11 As we will see, in her Gesta Ottonis Hrotsvit
declared that the coronation of Otto was a translatio regni from the Franks to the
Saxons, and thus a transferal of the task of Christian renewal of the empire from
Carolingians to Ottonians. She began to write her plays very soon after Otto was
10 David Knowles, "Introduction," Concerning the City of God, p. xvii.

11 The phrase is taken from Charlemagne's first imperial bull, as quoted by Helmut Beumann, "No-
men imperatoris: Studien zur Kaiseridee Karls d. Gr.," Historische Zeitschrift 185/3 (1958), 515-49,
here p. 517.
made emperor in 962, and the first play features two Roman emperors ideally
suited to express rule according to God's standards or those of men, Constantine
the Great and Julian the Apostate.
The following comments on the individual dramas must be brief, but I hope to
show for each one precisely where the conflict of flesh and spirit is to be found-
that is, to identify the particular form taken by Hrotsvit's theme. Her dramatic
program has elements that are fully recognized and uncontroversial, and this paper
will say nothing new in the area of such elements as form, style, and the elusive
but undoubtable relationship to Terence. Its concern is the thematic heart of
Hrotsvit's program, her message.12
THE IMPERIAL PLAYS
Three plays (Gallicanus; Agape, Chionia, and Hirena; Sapientia) present the
clash of Roman political authority with Christianity. All include Roman emperors
among their speaking roles (respectively, Constantine the Great and Julian the
Apostate; Diocletian; Hadrian). These plays are political, a plain fact to which
virtually no comment has been directed. They are framed for direct reference to
Hrotsvit's political world, at the apex of which was Emperor Otto I, uncle of her
abbess and teacher Gerberga, whose court Hrotsvit may have frequented as a
young girl and later.13 Whether or not she had any personal relationship with
Otto, much less such a direct one as that shown in Diirer's familiar woodcut,
Hrotsvit was familiar with the facts of Christian imperial politics in her day and
with the theory of translatio imperii that underlay it.14 She knew that Otto,
crowned by Pope John XII, stood in the line of Julian, Diocletian, Hadrian, and
notably of the great Christian Constantine; her Gesta Ottonis, begun only a few
years after the coronation, celebrates Otto as a Christian warrior comparable to
12 My discussion rests on the assumption that Hrotsvit is responsible for all details of her plays, even
though they are based on legends. She selected particular stories for dramatization from among count-
less others; and while these are familiar in various textual forms (see the first paragraphs of Homeyer's
introductions), one cannot say exactly what Hrotsvit read, or heard, in any single case, and so it is
impossible to say with certainty that in a particular detail she was constrained by her source or that
she deliberately changed it. I will also avoid the question of whether her plays are really such, or should
be called "dramatized legends," "dialogues," or the like. However important that much-discussed
question may be, it is not significant for this article. Except as otherwise noted, I quote the plays in
English from The Plays of Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, trans. Larissa Bonfante with Alexandra
Bonfante-Warren (New York, 1979), her translations being more idiomatic than those of Wilson
(Plays).
13 Dronke, Women Writers, pp. 56-57: "There are good reasons for supposing that Hrotsvitha was
at the court at an early age .... [F]rom the 960s onward, especially through Gerberga, Hrotsvitha's
links with the Ottonian court were far-reaching." Dronke bases several interpretive ideas on this
biographical background, such as Virgilian intertextuality in Maria (pp. 79-80).
14 In one of two Diirer woodcuts in the editio princeps, Hrotsvit, kneeling, presents her works to
Emperor Otto, seated in full imperial regalia, with Gerberga standing by (reproduced at the head of
their translations by Bonfante and by Wilson). On Hrotsvit's familiarity with the theory of translatio
imperii, see Homeyer, pp. 399-400: "Das Imperium Romanum ... ist fur sie ein fester Traditions-
begriff. Rom selbst ist caput orbis. ... Die Vorstellung, nach der das mittelalterliche Kaisertum eine
Fortsetzung des r6mischen Imperiums bildete, war ihr vertraut."
David and distinguished for virtus, pietas, sapientia, and clementia. One should
not overlook the evocation of the Imperium Romanum in the three political plays;
to ignore this out of fascination with their erotic moments (Gallicanus's desire for
Constantia; the threatened rapes of the two groups of virgins) does an injustice to
Ottonian self-awareness.15
Gallicanus
Hrotsvit's first play has troubled all critics by seeming to fall into two separate
parts, with different protagonists engaged in events lying thirty years apart.16
Scholarly concern for quasi-Aristotelian unities is misplaced because they were
unknown to Hrotsvit and are irrelevant to her purposes. The unity of Gallicanus
is that of its subject: the Roman Empire and the Roman emperor, both holy and
unholy. Individuals change, but the office of emperor is constant, as are the clash
of empire and faith, the contrast of good and evil rulers (Constantine, Julian), and
God's immanence in history. We should here note Augustine's point that God, the
source of all power, gave the empire to both Constantine and Julian the Apostate
(The City of God 5.21). In Gallicanus God twice works miracles to sustain the
halting progress of Christianity (under Constantine, the battlefield revelation to
Gallicanus; under Julian, the healing of Terentianus's son). The symmetry of the
"parts"-two emperors, two commanders, two miracles, two conversions-cre-
ates a unified drama despite the shifting of character focus (Constantia last speaks
in 1.6; Gallicanus's death is merely reported ["gladio est peremptus," 2.4; "killed
by the sword"]; the second convert, Terentianus, first appears in the penultimate
scene).
The love of God of Constantine and Constantia leads to the conversion of
Gallicanus, which leads to peace. The conciliation of the Scythians extends the
pax Romana, which is also a pax Christiana, and presages the world at peace (in
theory) under German Christian emperors; but Julian's worship of idols leads to
murder and madness and, from the perspective of history, consigns his dying em-
15 Typical of this oversight is Kuhn's statement that the "besonderes Hauptthema" of Gallicanus is
"die Auseinandersetzung zwischen der virginitas, die die Kaiserstochter Konstanzia gelobt hat, und
der Ehe, die der heidnische Feldherr Gallican von ihr fordert" (p. 94). This tension is effectively resolved
early in the play by the formulation of Constantia's plan, her pious prayer, and the certainty of Gal-
licanus's daughters, recent converts, that he, too, will accept Christ (1.2-5). If we were to take the
conflict of sexual wishes as Hrotsvit's "Hauptthema," we would have to fault her severely for aban-
doning it before she was well under way.
16 For example, Feruccio Bertini, "Hrotsvith, die Dichterin," in Heloise und ihre Schwestern, ed.
Bertini (Munich, 1991), p. 118: "Der erste dramatische Dialog ... besteht aus zwei voneinander
ziemlich unabhangigen Teilen, in denen von Ereignissen erzahlt wird, die im Abstand von mehr als
dreigig Jahren stattgefunden haben"; Dronke even refers to "the two Gallicanus plays," calling the
latter part of the text a "coda" or "sequel" to the former (Women Writers, p. 60). Scholars taking this
position align themselves with the eighteenth-century formalist Johann Christoph Gottsched, who
admired Hrotsvit but rapped her knuckles for such blunders in Gallicanus: "der Ort andert sich oft,
und die Zeit des Stiickes ist viel zu gro. .... [M]an sieht wohl, dag es eigentlich zwo Schauspiele
werden. So hat denn freylich die gute Rhoswitha den Terenz nicht in der Richtigkeit der theatralischen
Regeln nachahmen k6nnen; aber gleichwohl ihren guten Willen gewiesen" (N6thiger Vorrat zur Ge-
schichte der Deutschen Dramatischen Dichtkunst, 1 [Leipzig, 1757; repr. 1970], pp. 6-7).
pire to the past. Paul identified idolatry and homicide as works of the flesh but
peace as a fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5.20-22), and so the turmoil of empire shown
in Gallicanus reflects the struggle between flesh and spirit in the political domain.
This play is an emperor's mirror held up by Hrotsvit to Otto and his court, in
which they were to observe both Otto's imperial forebear and model, Constantine,
and his reverse image, the infamous apostate.17 Its pertinence to Otto is under-
scored by the specific issue giving rise to the action: Constantine, seated in the
eastern marches of the empire, is threatened by a pagan people from the East, the
Scythians, whose military might proves so superior to Rome's (even with Galli-
canus at the army's head) that divine intervention alone brings victory. The main
military problem for Otto, seated in the east of the empire, was pagan peoples
farther east, Slavs and Magyars, and his most important victory that over the
Magyars at the Lech in 955. Otto's Ostpolitik secured and extended the Christian
empire eastward, just as Constantine's does in the play. Gallicanus reminds Otto's
court that his eastern campaigns serve the Christian cause; that his victories were
given by God; and that he is to rule subjugated peoples not by the standard of the
flesh, with its lust for domination (Augustine: libido dominandi), but by the stan-
dard of the spirit ("facite vos tributarios imperatoris," Gallicanus enjoins the
Scythians, "et vivite beate sub Romana pace.... [A]mplectamur foederatos, quos
publicos insectabamur inimicos," 1.9.3: "Become his [the emperor's] tributaries,
and live happily under the Roman peace.... Let us embrace as allies those we
once pursued as enemies").18 The peaceful conciliation of enemies was an impor-
tant tenet of Christian statecraft.19
The martyrdoms under Julian follow from Julian's perception of a Christian
danger to the empire analogous to Constantine's perception of the Scythian dan-
ger. The contrast of two cities is repeated. Although Julian's libido dominandi
causes the death of Christian disciples, the conversion of Terentianus and the
healing of his son show that the spiritual transformation of rule desperately re-
sisted by Julian progresses nonetheless. Gallicanus frames the conflict of flesh and
17 Otto's court was keenly aware of his status as a successor of Constantine and of Charlemagne.
"Auch im 'Karlskult der sachsischen Dynastie' konnte das durch Karl den Grogen vermittelte byzan-
tinische Vorbild gefunden werden ... [Otto laift] sich als dritten Grogen nach Konstantin und Karl
feiern: omnium augustorum augustissimus tercius post Constantinum [formula used by Pope John
XIII]," Reinhart Staats, Theologie der Reichskrone: Ottonische "Renovatio Imperii" im Spiegel einer
Insignie (Stuttgart, 1976), p. 119. Cf. Homeyer, p. 400.
18 "The one [Augustinian city] is dominated by lust for power (libido dominandi), both in its princes
and in the nations it subjugates": Johannes van Oort, "Civitas Dei-terrena civitas: The Concept of
the Two Antithetical Cities and Its Sources," in Christoph Horn, ed., De civitate Dei, Klassiker Aus-
legen 11 (Berlin, 1997), pp. 157-69, here p. 159. Van Oort paraphrases De civitate Dei 14.28: "Illi
in principibus eius uel in eis quas subiugat nationibus dominandi libido dominatur."
19 Cf. Dennis Kratz, "The Gesta Ottonis in Its Contexts," in Rara avis, ed. Wilson, pp. 201-9:
"Otto's piety is specifically connected to David .... Otto's mercy is connected with his piety, for that
virtue leads him ... to forgive his enemies" (p. 205); "Otto's is Christian virtus. He demonstrates
iustitia and clementia in his treatment of his subjects and his foes" (p. 206). Kratz compares this portrait
with that of the rex maior in Ruodlieb, whose merciful kindness toward his defeated enemy moves
the latter to effusive praise (pp. 206-7). Einhard takes note of the famed mercifulness of Charlemagne:
"he was deeply loved and respected by everyone at home and abroad during all of his life, and no one
ever accused him of being unnecessarily harsh" (Vita Karoli Magni 20, p. 83).
spirit at three interlocking levels. At the personal level, the converted hero knows
he should not remain in the presence of Constantia, whom he still loves, lest he
be tempted ("Nulla magis est vitanda temptatio quam oculorum concupiscentia"
[1.13.4; "No temptation is to be shunned more ... than the eyes' wanton desire,"
trans. Wilson], citing 1 John 2.16). Despite his conversion and his decision to live
celibately, Gallicanus is not certain of his ability to resist the urging of his body.
At the social level, the pagan principes at court support Gallicanus's bid for Con-
stantia (1.1, 3-4), and later Julian's consules support his persecutions. On the
battlefield the tribuni urge the surrender of Constantine's army, while Paul and
John urge Gallicanus's conversion as the path to victory (1.9). Paul and John,
brought up at court, confront Julian there and refuse his demand for service (2.5).
At the level of statecraft, the empire follows either the standard of the spirit by
assimilating in Christ a pagan folk or that of the flesh by persecuting its own
members who are Christian. Gallicanus is structurally Hrotsvit's most ambitious
play.
I find it difficult to accord much weight to the "problem" of the play that other
critics have found, the threat posed to Constantia's chastity by Gallicanus's wish
to marry her. His desire stimulates her inventive mind and so begets the stratagem
by which he is converted and the Scythians subdued-and converted. Here and
elsewhere Hrotsvit presents a sexual situation that has immediate dramatic value
in order to explore deeper problems and so to develop her theme.
Agape, Chionia, and Hirena

The second imperial drama also presents the situation of a chaste Christian girl
(in this case, three girls) urged to marry, but Diocletian's motive in urging such
marriage is not sexual-the sisters' virginity is not itself important to him, being
merely a mark of their Christianity. Interpreters of the play should not accord it
more importance than he does. Diocletian offers a great boon, judged by standards
of the flesh (marriage to high-placed courtiers), so that the girls will be integrated
into his empire: "Parentelae claritas ingenuitatis ... exigit, vos nuptiali lege primis
in palatio copulari" (1.1, emphasis added; "Because of your high rank [and] good
family ... [y]ou are to be married to the noblest of our court"). In this respect he
thinks and acts like Julian, who wanted the sometime imperial courtiers Paul and
John to resume their former places ("cupio vos inter primos in palatio extollere,"
Gallicanus 2.5.6, emphasis added; "I wish to raise you to the highest rank, / And
have you with me in my court"). Diocletian stipulates that the girls renounce
Christ and perform idolatry ("si Christum negare nostrisque diis sacrificia velitis
ferre," 1.1.1; "If you will deny Christ / And offer sacrifices to our gods"), just as
Julian had of John and Paul (2.7.1), and idolatry ("idolorum servitus") is one of
the works of the flesh identified by Paul in Galatians 5. As one critic has remarked
of the similar plot in Sapientia, "Hrotvitha's emphasis ... is not on sexual con-
tamination but ideological."20 The rest of the girls' dialogue with Diocletian con-
20 Howard McNaughton, "Hrotswitha and the Dramaturgy of Liminality," Journal of the Austra-
lasian Universities Modern Language Association 80 (1993), 1-16, at p. 11.
cerns this sin exclusively. Neither he nor they allude to the matter of their virginity
once Agape has rejected his proposal (in the play's second speech, "nec ad nega-
tionem confitendi nominis, nec ad corruptionem integritatis ullis rebus compelli
poterimus," 1.1.2; "Nothing can make us deny His name, / Nor can anything
force us to soil the purity / Of our maidenly estate").
Attack on the girls' virginity, which has been mistaken as the issue of the play,
occurs when the emperor consigns them to underlings. As head of state he, through
torture, would punish blasphemy of its religion and would avenge personal dis-
respect ("Istae contumaces nostrisque decretis contraluctantes catenis inretiantur,"
1.1.8; "Then let these stubborn girls, / Who have opposed our decrees, / Be put
in chains"), but their sexual defilement is not an end in itself, nor is it the torture
he envisions. Dulcitius's comic assault on the virgins is an aberration, one could
say a dereliction of duty. Overwhelmed by desire when he first sees the girls, he
has them removed from the (appropriate) prison to the (inappropriate) pantry,
where he plans to violate them-for personal gratification, not to punish their
offense to empire and emperor. The secrecy with which he attempts this proves
that he recognizes it as action unsuited to his office and charge. His second scheme
is also personal: stripping them in public will repay them for the derision he has
suffered ("quo versa vice, quid nostra possint ludibria, experiantur," 7; "so that
they experience similar mockery in retaliation for ours," trans. Wilson). This has
nothing to do with the emperor's grievance. Dulcitius never gets to the point of
obeying Diocletian's orders, and the episodes centered on him are a slapstick in-
terlude within the main action, which is Diocletian's effort to force Christians to
live by the standards of the flesh and through idolatry to conform themselves to
his empire. It is particularly regrettable that this play has come to be known by
the name of the emperor's praeses, whose buffoonery is merely a complement to
Hrotsvit's theme as developed in the main plot.21
In transferring the task of punishment or conversion to Sisinnius, Diocletian
reminds us of the issue: "ne viles mulierculae iactant se impune nostris diis deo-
21 Homeyer believes that the prominence of the Dulcitius interlude in the prose summary preceding
the play shows the weight Hrotsvit placed on it (p. 264), but the authority of these summaries is
dubious. Katharina Wilson calls them Hrotsvit's "epitomes" (Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: The Ethics of
Authorial Stance [Leiden, 1988], p. 60), but the summary for Sapientia holds three major inconsisten-
cies with the play itself, most glaring the identity of the emperor (in the play he is Hadrian, but the
epitome calls him Diocletian-who is the emperor in Agape, Chionia, and Hirena). It cannot have
been written by the playwright. Similarly, the summary for Drusiana states that Calimachus died of
snakebite ("morsu serpentis male periit," Homeyer, p. 283), but this is not true: "nur Fortunatus ...
[wird] von der Schlange gebissen ... wahrend Calimachus, ohne verwundet worden zu sein, vor
Schreck leblos zu Boden sinkt" (Homeyer, p. 279; the line reads, "ego commorior prae timore," 7.2).
The summary for Maria gives a term of twenty years for her penance, but the play ends with it still
in progress. That for Thais says she was an immured penitent for five years, but in the play the term
is three years (and the symbolism of "three" is important: see n. 42 below). The summary for Agape,
Chionia and Hirena may stress the interlude simply because its broad comedy was so memorable. This
is not to deny the symbolism that Sandro Sticca has explained in "Hroswitha's Dulcitius and Christian
Symbolism," Mediaeval Studies 32 (1970), 108-27, because there is no doubt that Dulcitius's wicked
intentions associate him with the devil, but I disagree with Sticca regarding "the unquestionable prom-
inence . . . given to Dulcitius' lustful antics in the Kitchen" (p. 108). Although it is memorable, I do
not find the episode prominent.
rumque cultoribus illudere" (9; "These shameless young girls must no longer /
Unscathed go about boasting that they have humiliated our gods / And those
devoted to their cult"). The count understands that the problem is ideological and
political, and, unlike Dulcitius, he is a competent and conscientious deputy. He
craftily separates Hirena, the youngest, from her sisters (10), and then demands
that Agape and Chionia sacrifice to the gods, which they refuse to do (11.1). He
orders these two "blasphemas" to be burned, and so their spirits leave their un-
harmed bodies without a word having been spoken of their virginity, or of sexu-
ality, since Agape's first words to Diocletian. For the clearheaded Sisinnius, vir-
ginity is irrelevant. He resorts to sexual threat with Hirena because he has seen
that physical torments are ineffective. Misunderstanding Christian theology, he
tries to torture her mind with the horror of the brothel so that she will commit
idolatry, but she calmly explains that corruption of the flesh, absent volition, does
not soil the spirit ("Voluptas parit poenam, necessitas autem coronam; nec dicitur
reatus, nisi quod consentit animus," 12.3; "Earthly pleasures and lust bring pun-
ishment. / But trials bring the crown of Heaven. / There is no sin, unless the soul
consents"). Sexual threats are useless against persons who live by the standard of
the spirit.
Sapientia
Similar in broad outline to Agape, Chionia, and Hirena, the third imperial drama,
and the second featuring three virgin martyrs, studies the contest of flesh and spirit
at a higher level.22 Where Agape, Chionia, and Hirena was set vaguely in a Roman
territory, Sapientia is set in the imperial capital itself. Where Agape and her sisters
were quietly living their private lives until summoned by Diocletian, Sapientia has
come to Rome with her daughters and is actively seeking to convert Romans to
Christianity ("hortatur nostrates, avitos ritus deserere et christianae religioni se
dedere," 1.5; "This woman ... / Encourages our people / To abandon their an-
cestral rites / And give themselves over / To the Christian religion"). Whereas the
blasphemy of Agape and her sisters was not said to be socially subversive, Sapi-
entia's missionary work is succeeding, so that Roman wives are refusing social
and sexual relations with their husbands (ibid.). Where Diocletian was motivated
by a general concern to force conformity upon his subjects, and the only allusion
to danger for the empire came from Agape and was ridiculed by him (1.3), Sapi-
entia begins with a detailed account from Antiochus of the grave threat to the
empire posed by religious dissent-specifically by the newly arrived, proselytizing
Christian woman-and Hadrian needs little persuading, because he knows that
the whole Roman world is infected by the plague of Christianity (1.4-5). Where
Diocletian had dismissed Agape's warning "Periculum-" with "Ista insanit"
(1.3), Hadrian admits the peril: "Fateor, periculum" (1.6; "I must admit that is a
22 The play is correctly titled for its heroine, despite the wording of the prose summary paralleling
that of Agape, Chionia, and Hirena ("Passio sanctarum virginum Fidei Spei et Karitatis"). See Ho-
meyer, p. 355: "Hrotsvitha hat die Mutter ... verherrlicht und zur Hauptheldin gemacht. Sapientia
ist es, die ihre eigene Glaubensstarke an den Leiden der Tochter exemplifizieren will. Mit ihr beginnt
und endet das Stuck. Die Madchen leben und sterben nur durch die Mutter."
dangerous situation"). The torments in the first play were directed at the girls
because of their own blasphemy and lese-majeste, while those in the second play
are directed at the girls in part because Hadrian hopes their suffering will weaken
their mother (cf. 5.3). Those torments are perfunctory for Agape and her sisters
compared with the ordeals that Fides and hers endure, and Hadrian is an active
torturer, devising and observing, while Diocletian kept at a sovereign remove from
the actions of his governor and his count.
The drastic and prolonged cruelties in Sapientia reflect the crisis of the empire
that this play embodies. Hadrian's demented butchery is the desperation of the
devil sensing the end is near, not unlike the depredations of Antichrist, and Hrots-
vit foreshadows the transformation of the empire from flesh to spirit, so dreaded
by Antiochus and Hadrian, in her final scene, the moving tableau of Sapientia
among the Roman women she has converted. This opens a perspective on Chris-
tian history that Agape, Chionia, and Hirena altogether lacks.
The earlier play showed the seed of change embodied in the faith and stead-
fastness of three Christian women. The later play shows the process of change in
the empire, its Christianization, as the three young women remain steadfast, and,
more importantly, their mother, the genius of their faith, survives them to celebrate
their martyrdom within the new Roman community she has created. Hrotsvit's
Sapientia is the mother of Faith, Hope, and Charity, but she is also the mother of
a Christian congregation in the holy city. Sapientia studies the contest of flesh and
spirit in the political history of the world, extending the limited view of Agape,
Chionia, and Hirena toward the moment when the Roman Empire became Chris-
tian. It is not as complex an artistic structure as Gallicanus, and in that respect
less ambitious, but it is Hrotsvit's major statement about the spiritual nature of
the empire ruled by Otto the Great.
THE PLAYS OF SEXUALITY
Sexual desire, present as an ancillary factor in the political dramas, is central to

the plots of the other three works, and so I group them for discussion. Such desire
is not a theme in any of them (I doubt it is ever thematic for Hrotsvit), but she
uses the energy of sexuality to create situations and conflicts that embody the
ideas she wants to explore.
Drusiana
The lurid form taken by sexual desire in this play suggests affinities with Thais
but Calimachus does not act out his impulse in Drusiana's tomb, and so necr
philia is no more a fact in the play than is male sodomy in the legend Pelagiu
(Hrotsvit has gained some easy notoriety by suggesting the possibility of thin
she declined to present as events.) Drusiana is very subtle. It modulates from focus
on one character to focus on another, and on one opus carnis to another, but t
earlier focuses anticipate the later ones, which in turn recall them. The play begin
with the familiar situation of sexual desire striving against the will to chastit
Such dramatic situations provide immediate referents for the contest of flesh and
spirit-sexuality sets Hrotsvit's stage. Calimachus, a pagan, passionately loves

Drusiana, a Christian woman living in chaste marriage with her Christian hus-
band, Andronicus. She rebuffs his advances and prays to God for death, which
he brings about. Calimachus gains access to her uncorrupted corpse and has dared
to undrape it when God kills him. Calimachus, restored to life by the prayers of
John, repents and is converted; Drusiana is resurrected similarly; and the ensemble
of four principals, all now Christian and chaste, rejoices. This part of the drama
is conventional and predictable-Hrotsvit must have welcomed the sensational
notion of necrophilia to make it more lively-but early in its course her deep
speculations about the human heart, sin, and redemption begin.
Drusiana's monologue ending with her prayer for death ("Iube me in te, Christe,
ocius mori ... !" 4; "Lord, grant me ... swift death! Call me to thee . . .") has
complexities and ambiguities that have not been adequately analyzed. She is be-
wildered: "quid prodest castitatis professionem subiisse, cum is amens mea de-
ceptus est specie?" ("what use is my vow of chastity if this madman is ensnared
by my beauty?"),23 as though her vow were just a practical measure to spare her
the unpleasantness of importunate wooers. In fact, it is a spiritual dedication per-
haps most valuable precisely when confronted by desire. "Intende, domine, mei
timorem; intende, quem patior, dolorem!" ("Oh, Lord, see my fear; see the pain
I suffer!"). What is the origin of this fear and pain? She cannot doubt her own
resolve, can she? She is not so ignorant dogmatically, having St. John as mentor,
as to think she is spiritually endangered by the unchaste desires of another-that
is, she surely knows the lesson Hirena gave to Sisinnius (quoted above), "There
is no sin, unless the soul consents." Erotic passion frightens and grieves her, yet it
is she who, in the conversation with Calimachus, explicitly sexualizes their talk:
he speaks of her beauty and of his love, and she exclaims, "Discede, discede, leno
nefande"(3.3; "Out of my sight, out of my sight, you vile seducer!" trans. Wilson),
and more of the same. It is she who cuts to the sexual chase. A moment later she
asks how he could imagine her yielding when she has not slept with her husband
for a long time ("per multum temporis"). Between those speeches she blushes-
he wonders if this betrays an inner movement in his favor, but she objects, "I feel
no reaction except for disgust" ("Nihil aliud nisi indignationem," 3.4, trans. Wil-
son). One wonders, because Hrotsvit's heroines do not elsewhere blush when con-
fronted by desire. Has long sexual abstinence made this sexually experienced
young woman sensitive to the ardor of a young man whom she, by her own
statement, finds delicatus ("Iube me ... ocius mori, ne fiam in ruinam delicato
iuveni!" ["So I won't be the ruin of that attractive young man"])? And in what
way might she be his ruin (which is surely a spiritual rather than social idea)? He
has already desired her; no way to change that. She must envision actual adultery
with Calimachus, which will bring about his ruin, and hers. Moreover, her urge
to save him by dying merely leads toward the evidently more heinous sin of nec-
rophilia.
Drusiana does not know what to do. She fears being the cause of civil discord
23 All quotations from Drusiana's monologue are from section 4 of the text, and all translations of
the lines are my own.
if she denounces him ("si prodidero, civilis per me fiet discordia" ["If I reveal this
business, there will be public commotion"]), which is odd: surely her husband,
the prince, would handle the matter astutely. In any case, public amusement is a
more likely response than civilis discordia to public knowledge that a youth is
infatuated with his prince's chaste wife. More importantly, Drusiana fears suc-
cumbing ("si celavero, insidiis diabolicis sine te refragari nequeo" ["If I cover it
up, only thy help can keep me from these wicked snares"]) and for that reason
prays to die: "die fromme Drusiana [bittet] Gott um den erlosenden Tod, um nicht
der Anfechtung durch das Liebeswerben des schonen Heidenjunglings zu erlie-
gen."24 This is a remarkable moment, but it has been carefully prepared by the
preceding part of the speech. The cumulative evidence in her own words of Dru-
siana's deep confusion and uncertainty builds the dramatic foundation of her
prayer for death.25
The fact of this prayer and God's response to it are complex matters. When
Drusiana declares that she cannot resist Calimachus without God's help ("sine te
refragari nequeo," emphasis added), she only says what countless Christians have
said piously in moments of trial: I cannot do this alone, God, without you. The
natural and dogmatically correct next step is to pray for God's help, just as Agape
and her sisters prayed when the would-be rapist Dulcitius approached in the night
("Deus nos tueatur!" 4.1). Prayer works wonders, and with God all things are
possible (as the misadventures of Dulcitius prove). These are catechetical truths
that Drusiana seems to have forgotten. Her prayer for death expresses a mind at
the brink of despair, at the brink of the unforgivable sin of suicide. Feruccio Bertini
calls her "verzweifelt" in this moment, but I think she has not quite reached the
point of theological desperatio. Hrotsvit employs instead the term tristitia for her
suicidal state of mind, first used of her by her husband ("in febrem prae-tristitia
incidit et mortem ... invitavit" [9.2; "then, ill with sorrow and grief, / (she) Prayed
for release in death"]) and later by Calimachus ("mea Drusiana ... quae gravi
cum tristitia defungebaris extrema" [9.21; "my Drusiana ... you have died in
grave and extreme sadness," trans. Wilson]).26 How little Drusiana's morbid anxi-
ety, gravis tristitia extrema, resembles the confidence of Hrotsvit's virginal martyrs.
God hears her prayer and sends death, an action not adequately explained by
24 Nagel, Hrotsvit von Gandersheim, p. 57. Cf. Wilson, Medieval Women Writers, p. 32: "Drusiana
prays for death in order to forego temptation," but it is clear that she has already been powerfully
tempted. Her prayer is to die in order not to sin.
25 Bertini has appreciated this speech, but he has not seen how Hrotsvit evokes the labile woman's
state in preceding dialogue: "Man sieht, die Handlung erreicht ihren plotzlichen Hohepunkt in dem
Augenblick, als Drusiana, die sich wahrend des Zwiegesprachs mit Calimachus so stark, unnahbar
und selbstsicher gezeigt hatte, allein zuriickgeblieben die ganze Schwache einer Frau offenbart. Ver-
zweifelt bei dem Gedanken, der Versuchung nicht widerstehen zu k6nnen ... erfleht sie lieber den Tod.
Sehr einfiihlsam hat Hrotsvith die Risse erahnt, die sich in Drusianas Panzer der Tugend zu bilden
beginnen. .." ("Hrotsvith, die Dichterin," p. 121).
26 Several characters in Hrotsvit's works are afflicted by sadness. See the passages cited in the word
index of Paul von Winterfeld, Hrotsvithae opera (Berlin, 1902), p. 492, s.v. "tristitia." It is possible
that Hrotsvit uses the term in an Augustinian sense, for Augustine knew the spiritual danger of extreme
sadness: "we must be on our guard ... to make sure that we are not ... immersed in the darkness of
error, for fear that ... dishonorable or immoderate sadness may overwhelm us (ne absorbeat inhonesta
uel inmoderata tristitia)" (The City of God 22.23).
the threat posed by Calimachus. If it were merely his lust that worried the Creator,
he could thwart Calimachus as he did Dulcitius; or, knowing Drusiana to be strong
despite her misgivings, he could let events run their course. I suggest that God
sends death to Drusiana for exactly the reason he later sends it to Calimachus,
which is to prevent a good person from erring unforgivably.27 Calimachus is about
to commit necrophilia when God sends the snake; Drusiana is suicidal when God
sends the fever. Their parallel deaths and resurrections express parallel dangers,
but the danger for Drusiana lies in spiritual not corporal weakness. The pagan
youth cannot control his sexual desire, and it drives him toward deadly sin, while
the Christian woman has tried but failed to transcend sexual desire completely,
and her sense of failure plunges her into profound tristitia, so that she wants to
die. God acts mercifully toward each, "parcendo occidit et occidendo vivificavit"
(John's words to Calimachus, 9.18; "who in sparing Thee ... / Did kill Thee, /
And in killing Thee has made Thee truly live").
Thus Hrotsvit prepares the way for her focus on Fortunatus and the spiritual
sin of envy while studying Drusiana's spiritual crisis within the problem of Cali-
machus's passion. This modulation is highly creative. There is no doubt which
kind of sin Hrotsvit thinks more interesting and important, for the words of Deus
(7.2), that he will resurrect Drusiana and Calimachus (only), make John and An-
dronicus ponder the exclusion of Fortunatus from grace, and Andronicus accu-
rately perceives the greater gravity of Fortunatus's sin ("hic [Calimachus], carnali
deceptus delectatione, deliquit ignorantia, iste [Fortunatus] autem sola malitia"
[9.5; "this man sinned out of ignorance / Deceived by love of flesh, / The other
only out of wickedness"]).
The truly shocking moment in the play, its dramatic climax, is the suicide of
Fortunatus. His envy, pride, and malice drive him into eternal damnation: "vitam
repudio mortemque eligo sponte quia malo non esse quam in his tantam habun-
danter virtutum gratiam sentiscere" (9.28; "I, of my own free will, choose death
over life- / I prefer not to exist at all / Than to see them so overfull with the Power
of Grace"). The parallel to Drusiana is striking, for Fortunatus wills his own death,
just as Drusiana had willed hers, but his wickedness (unlike her goodness) allows
no resurrection. God hearkens to Drusiana's second prayer but grants only half
of it, animating Fortunatus again ("iube materiale corpus Fortunati ... in viven-
tem animam iterum reformari" [9.26; "bring back to Fortunatus' body ... / The
warmth of life"]) but refusing to resurrect him to spiritual life ("quo trina nostri
resuscitatio tibi in laudem vertatur" [ibid.; "let this triple Resurrection bring Thee
praise"]). Calimachus, the new Christian, has a better sense of sin and justice in
this moment than do the others when he says of Fortunatus, "Non est enim dignus
resurrectione" (9.22; "he is not worthy of Resurrection"). John rebukes him for
invidia (9.22, 25), but John's understanding is incorrect, with regard both to
Calimachus (who is not invidious) and to Fortunatus (who does deserve eternal
death). This proves the very point John made earlier about the incommensurability
27 Necrophilia may or may not have been classed as an unforgivable sin in theological discussion of
the time, but within the play it is regarded with special horror: Calimachus calls his own intent "de-
testabile scelus" (7.2) and gravis impietas (9.14); it is termed scelus, facinus, and nefas subsequently
(9.2-4, 9), the result of dementia or insania (9.11).
of "divini subtilitas iudicii" and "humani sagacita[s] ingenii" ("The wisdom of
Divine Justice far surpasses / Human intellect or understanding," 9.6).
In their conversation after the snake dispatches Fortunatus to Hell, Andronicus
and John work out the meaning of events. There is not a word in this summation
about love or sexual desire. The issue is the malicious, prideful envy that damned
the servant.28 At first glance it might seem that Hrotsvit has deviated from the
program I propose for her plays by writing one in which sins of the body and of
the mind are studied without any embodiment of the struggle of flesh and spirit,
but we must remember that Paul explicitly includes among his examples of works
of the flesh the wickedness of Fortunatus, invidia. Fornication, impurity, and lech-
ery head Paul's list, and other bodily sins end it (drunkenness, gluttony), but at
the center are corruptions of the spirit-idolatry, sorcery, enmity, etc., as well as
the capital sins of wrath and envy. By beginning this play with a standard problem
in the area of sexuality (lust versus abstinence), then modulating through Drusi-
ana's dangerous tristitia to the capital sin of envy, Hrotsvit reminds her audience,
especially her fellows at Gandersheim and others who have vowed sexual purity,
that the danger of the flesh lies not only in the urges of the body but also in the
errancy of the spirit. Calimachus, Drusiana, and Fortunatus are all caught up in
this struggle. The youth's sin of inordinate desire is readily forgiven, and he is the
first resurrected. Drusiana's confused movement toward death arose in her desire
to be good, and she is healed. Fortunatus, the filius diaboli (9.33) whose soul is
envy, dies eternally. In life's contest, says Hrotsvit, beware corporal pollution, but
guard even more vigilantly against corruption of the spirit.
Maria
In this play, as in Drusiana, the sexuality of the plot has distracted readers from
the problem, which is the tristitia of Drusiana carried further-Maria despairs.
Hrotsvit certainly makes every effort to focus attention on this problem. Abraham
tells Effrem that after her seduction she was overcome by grief and plunged "in
foveam desperationis," further, that she fled into the world "quia veniam despera-
vit posse promereri" (3.6; "into desperation's lap," "having lost all hope of ever
gaining forgiveness"). Talking with Maria in the inn, he urges her to emerge "de
abysso desperationis" (7.9; "out of the abyss of your hopelessness") and then offers
her sound dogma on the mortal danger of this irremediable sin: "Qui enim pec-
cantibus deum misereri velle desperat, inremediabiliter peccat" (7.11; "whoever
has no faith / That God will have pity on sinners / Sins without remedy or hope").
Maria is eager to do penance "[s]i ulla promerendae spes veniae inesset" (7.10;
"if I had the slightest hope of forgiveness"). The problem is neither her loss of
28 Hrotsvit's dialogue does not reflect the classification and terminology of capital sins familiar from
later treatises, in which malitia would be a derivative sin not of a kind with invidia and superbia. She
uses all three terms for Fortunatus's inner pathology but gives priority to invidia, as we see in John's
exclamations after Fortunatus declares his suicide: "O admiranda diaboli invidia, o malitia serpentis
antiqui!" (9.29; "0, wondrous envy of Satan; O, malice of the ancient snake," trans. Wilson) and
"Nihil terribilius invido, nihil scelestius superbo" (9.31; "Nothing is more horrifying than envy, noth-
ing more sinful than pride," trans. Wilson).
virginity nor her prostitution-even the old ascetic Abraham knows that
"[h]umanum est peccare" (7.6: "It is human to sin"). Maria harbors no hope of
forgiveness for her initial lapse, and this hopelessness drives her to the whorehouse
and keeps her there. One must ask how a young woman raised from childhood
by pious monks could completely want the hope of forgiveness for sexual sin,
hope and forgiveness being basic Christian doctrine. That is the crucial question
in this play, and Hrotsvit's answer is plain: because Maria's virginal, male mentors,
obsessed with sexuality, understood and treated her simply as a body to be kept
intact, not as God's creature of spirit as well as flesh.29
Maria is twenty-eight when she loses her virginity. The fact of her own horror
and despair at her sexual failure suggests that during those twenty-eight years her
mentors had not adequately educated her in the Christian faith, founded on the
reality of God's merciful love and eagerness to forgive sin. She lacks all insight
into the efficacy of remorse. Abraham and Effrem appear to have filled her with
anxiety about sexuality and to have made her afraid that fornication means dam-
nation. Without questioning the personal piety and good intentions of these old
men, one must ask if they have not gravely abused their trust by immuring a female
child to preserve her virginity but without nurturing her understanding so that,
should she sin, she would not succumb to despair but would seek forgiveness.
The narrowness of Abraham's vision is plain from the start. He is terribly wor-
ried that the seven-year-old girl in his care may someday make love with a man.
Although his formulation is both oblique and affective, as he alludes to the pos-
sible darkening of her radiant beauty by some filth of pollution ("Id scilicet curo,
ne inmensa eius serenitas pulchritudinis alicuius obfuscetur sorde coinquina-
tionis," 1.3; "I am afraid lest the light and serenity / Of her great beauty be dimmed
by some taint of pollution"), Effrem understands immediately, as though to talk
about a female is to talk about the filth of sexuality. When told Maria's age, Effrem
remarks, "Inmatura pupilla" (1.4; "She is too young a ward for you"), which is
certainly true, but this perception, revealed in other allusions to the fact that Maria
is a young child (inbecillis aetas, 2.7; "in tenella aetate," 2.8), does not make the
hermits hesitate in their plan to immure her. Their persuasion of her is almost
painful to read. How could a child her age follow the notions of name and destiny
they advance?30 How could she understand their learned cosmology (her soul is
29 See the stimulating criticism of this play by M. Sperberg-McQueen, "Whose Body Is It? Chaste
Strategies and the Reinforcement of Patriarchy in Three Plays by Hrotswitha von Gandersheim,"
Women in German Yearbook 8 (1992), 47-71, at pp. 55-60. Concerning Maria's vulnerability to her
own fall, the author observes that "Maria ... has become a prostitute, incessantly repeating the
traumatizing event that so filled her with despair that she put an end to her life in the hermitage" (p.
58). In disagreement with Sperberg-McQueen I will argue that a historically plausible feminism un-
derlies the play and that Hrotsvit does not share responsibility for the two hermits' neglect of Maria's
spiritual person.
30 See also Sperberg-McQueen, p. 57: "the name itself is radically unstable. Abraham and Effrem
assume that the referent is the Virgin Mary-but it could equally be Mary Magdalene: the child is
marked from the start by an ambiguity that the hermits deny. ... The second problem is ... the
impossibility, enshrined in theology, of a mortal, and thus post-lapsarian, woman being identical to
the Virgin .... Maria, forced to assume the identity of her name, is confronted with a task that is
doomed to failure from the outset."
to transverse the aera, aethera, and zodiacum to reach the lucifuus thalamus of
the Virgin, 2.5)? In a word, Maria is fooled. She does what the old men ardently
want her to do, without understanding what her agreement implies. They do not
tell her that they plan to immure her; in fact they do not tell her anything at all
about the form of life to which she is agreeing. Their misleading theoretical prop-
osition ("si incorrupta et virgo permanebis, angelis dei fies aequalis," 2.5; "if you
will remain a virgin uncorrupt, / You will become equal to an angel of the Lord,"
which disregards all danger of spiritual sin) achieves her agreement in principle
("unde praesentia despicio, memet ipsam denego," 2.6; "I do now despise the
present world, / Myself I do deny"), and only then does Abraham reveal his plan
to immure her: "Ideo faciam illi exiguam ab introitu cellulam" (2.7; "So I will
make her a little cell, narrow of entrance").
Immurement was familiar to Hrotsvit as the most extreme form of Christian
eremitism, but her familiarity must have been very limited. The immured person
was not a common figure of her time and place; the popularity of this vocation
north of the Alps, and the literature, both biographical and theoretical, upon
which modern scholarly discussion is almost entirely based, begins a century later
and flourishes in the later Middle Ages.31 Hrotsvit very likely knew of two im-
mured women whose fame is reflected by their early vitae-Liutbirg, the first
inclusa in the duchy of Saxony, whose cell was at Wendhausen bei Thale, in the
diocese of Halberstadt, about seventy miles east of Gandersheim, and who died
around 880, and Wiborada, martyred by marauding Hungarians in her cell at St.
Gall in 926. Both women were celebrated by their contemporaries as well as later
generations, and it is important to note that they did not attain the advanced
status of inclusae until they had given evidence of exceptional zeal and ascetic
talent for periods of years. Liutbirg's immurement, undertaken only after her lay
lord and her bishop had consented, followed early years in a cloister and subse-
quent years in the Saxon count's household. Wiborada lived with her parents until
their deaths, made a pilgrimage to Rome with her brother (whom she subsequently
persuaded to enter the monastery at St. Gall), then lived six years in the world as
an ascetic before withdrawing to a cell near St. Gall for four more years; only
after this residence, during which she was not confined, did she take the final step
and obtain immurement by her bishop in 916, thus living as an inclusa the last
ten years of her life only.32 The pattern of the lives of these two female, near-
31 I reviewed current understanding of immurement in medieval Germany in an earlier essay: "Im-

murement and Religious Experience in The Stricker's 'Eingemauerte Frau,' " Beitrdge zur Geschichte
der deutschen Sprache und Literatur [Tiibingen] 96 (1974), 79-102; see the more recent, brief review
by Marianne Wynn in Wolfram's Parzival: On the Genesis of Its Poetry (Frankfurt am Main, 1984),
pp. 232-33. Still valuable is Herbert Grundmann's overview, "Deutsche Eremiten, Einsiedler und
Klausner im Hochmittelalter (10.-12. Jahrhundert)," Archiv fiir Kulturgeschichte 45 (1963), 60-90,
and Otmar Doerr, Das Institut der Inklusen in Siiddeutschland (Miinster, 1934). Sandro Sticca's pre-
sentation of medieval inclusae apropos of Hrotsvit ("The Hagiographic and Monastic Context of
Hrotswitha's Plays," in Rara avis, ed. Wilson, pp. 1-34, at pp. 19-20) does not take up the question
of appropriate maturity and proven aptitude in the would-be inclusa, which (as the following discus-
sion shows) I think critically important for reading Maria.
32 For the life of Liutbirg, see MGH SS 4:158-64. The lives of Wiborada are printed in the Acta
sanctorum for May, vol. 2 (Paris, 1866), pp. 287-313.
contemporaries of Hrotsvit is clear: immurement was understood as the final, most

rigorously penitential form of religious life, undertaken in a spirit of contrition
and appropriate only for persons who had amply proven themselves in antecedent
forms. Thus St. Benedict in his rule explained that anchorites and hermits have
"come through the test of living in a monastery for a long time, and have passed
beyond the first fervor of monastic life."33
Hrotsvit's likely understanding of female immurement conflicts with the think-
ing of Abraham and with his disposition of Maria. One can hardly imagine her
writing out this confinement of a child of seven as a positive, much less an ex-
emplary, act. Even admitting uncertainty about her historical understanding of
immurement, the internal evidence of her plays is not hard to read. They present
three immurements, two of Maria and one of Thais; Maria's second and that of
Thais are identically motivated as a penance necessary because of their extreme
sexual sinfulness. Their mentors comment on the paired extremities of sin and
penance: "Aequum est, ut iniquae sordes delectationis eliminentur acerbitate cas-
tigationis" (Effrem, 9.3; "It is only just that the dirt of her sinful delights / Be
purged by the bitterness of her penance"); "Nititur, ut, quanto extitit foedior, tanto
appareat nitidior" (Abraham, 9.4; "She strives with all her might for people to
see / How she, once foul, has now become / More brightly radiant"); "grave
delictum forte desiderat sperare remedium " (Pafnutius, regarding Thais, 7.7; "a
serious fault / Calls for a powerful treatment"; and later Pafnutius says to Thais,
regarding the human waste in which she will live, "Convenit, ut male blandientis
dulcedinem delectationis luas molestia nimii foetoris," 7.12; "It is only just that
you should purify your body / Of the sinful perfumes of pleasure / Which falsely
led you into evil, / By enduring this humiliation"). The penitential aspect of im-
murement is plain from these instances of satisfactio congrua, but Maria was
surely not a conspicuous sinner at age seven when Abraham and Effrem decided
to wall her off from life. The first confinement lacks every justification of the
second and third, and all represent a far more severe form of the solitary life than
Abraham and Effrem have chosen for themselves: the two socialize freely with
each other and talk with visitors from outside (Abraham: "accesserunt, qui, veri-
tatem scientes, res sese ita, ut tibi nunc exposui, habere," 3.15; "those who knew
what had happened / Came to me and told me the story I have just told you");
Abraham has a "faithful friend" whom he can send out into the world to locate
the fugitive ("fidelis amicus," 3.16) and who equips him at a moment's notice with
military clothes and a suitable horse (4.5-6); and Abraham has gold coin at hand
to pay the innkeeper (4.6; 5.2).34
33 RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English with Notes, ed. Timothy Fry, O.S.B.
(Collegeville, Minn., 1981), c. 1, p. 169.
34 Cf. Heinrich Fichtenau, Lebensordnungen des 10. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1992; first published
1984), on the emergence of hermit communities: "Vielfach ist man von dieser extrem individuellen
Form spirituellen Lebens abgegangen. Es war gut, in Stunden der Gefahr andere Eremiten rufen zu
k6nnen, mit denen man beten und sich beraten konnte. Die Eremitengemeinde brachte eine gewisse
Kontrolle durch andere und die Moglichkeit methodischen Vorgehens mit sich" (p. 329). Abraham
lives in such a community.
When she drafted the play, Hrotsvit would have been at about the same age as
the character Maria when she committed herself to the brothel. Having chosen
the religious life, Hrotsvit esteemed its ends and its means, but she surely would
not have approved the exclusion of a female child from education and from human
intercourse for the purpose of keeping her a virgin. Education and social experi-
ence were crucial for Hrotsvit's own response to God's grace in granting her in-
telligence and creativity. She was proud of her sex, proud of its abilities and
strength, proud of her own achievements in letters, and convinced that God called
women as well as men to learning and to literature.35 Abraham's decision to wall
up Maria, then to visit her in order to "instruct her through the window [orally]
in the Psalter and other biblical material" (2.7), must have seemed to Hrotsvit a
tragedy of misguided benevolence. We have already seen the consequences of
Abraham's plan: Maria yields to temptation and, in her ignorance of Christian
truth, despairs of forgiveness and becomes a whore.
Criticism of Abraham and Effrem must acknowledge their ascetic zeal and good
intentions. They are not bad men, and Hrotsvit does grace Abraham with the
hagiographic odor sanctitatis when he enters the tavern to rescue Maria (see 6.3
and Homeyer's note). Finally understanding the dire consequences of his failed
supervision, he acts with courage and love and deserves commendation for this
action. Nonetheless, Abraham and Effrem have erred with respect to Maria be-
cause in their own lives the contest of spirit and flesh was reduced to an issue of
sexual purity or corruption, and they raised her with a similarly inadequate un-
derstanding. Hrotsvit points ironically to Abraham's limited powers of compre-
hension when she has him tell Effrem of his frightening dreams, sent by God to
warn him. He would have understood, he says, "si mens non fuisset laeva" (3.8;
"had I not been so thoughtless"); hearing that in Abraham's first dream a dragon
devoured a little white dove, Effrem remarks, "Evidens visio" (3.8; "The meaning
of this vision is very clear"), but not so to Abraham, who fancies it foretold some
persecution of the church (3.9). At last Abraham connects the warning to Maria,
but too late (Effrem: "Sero meministi," Abraham: "Fateor" [3.11-12]; "Too late
you remembered"; "I confess it").
The contest of flesh and spirit in this play is waged around Maria, but the
contest is not about her chastity. Paradoxically, the old hermits, who conceive of
her life in terms of her body, act against the fulfillment of spiritual gifts in her.
Augustine condemned those who despise a part of the Creation in contempt of
35 In her prefaces and the letter to patrons Hrotsvit speaks repeatedly of God's gift to her and of the
imperative that it be fulfilled: "The talent of a little imagination, entrusted to me, was not to lie sluggish
in the heart's dark cavern and be destroyed by the rust of negligence, but rather, struck by the hammer
of unfailing diligence, ... it could still be transformed into an instrument of some-however paltry-
profit"; "I aspire only to this, that ... with submissive devotedness of spirit I might redirect the gift
of genius I have received back to the Giver"; "I feel joy deep in my heart that God, through whose
grace I am what I am, is praised in me.... I have no doubt that both denying the spontaneously given
gift of God and pretending to have received what was not received are equally wrongful"; "Therefore,
lest God's gift be annulled in me through my own negligence, I have tried to tear some threads . ..
from Philosophia's robe, to interweave them with the present work" (Dronke's translations, Women
Writers, pp. 65, 69, and 74).
the Creator: "For anyone who exalts the soul as the Supreme Good, and censures
the nature of flesh [sc. body] as something evil, is in fact carnal alike in his cult
of the soul and in his revulsion from the flesh, since this attitude is prompted by
human folly" (The City of God 14.5; "Nam qui uelut summum bonum laudat
animae naturam et tamquam malum naturam carnis accusat, profecto et animam
carnaliter adpetit et carnem carnaliter fugit, quoniam id uanitate sentit humana").
The formulation "animam carnaliter adpetit et carnem carnaliter fugit" perfectly
characterizes Abraham down to the point of his rescue mission, for he thinks of
Maria as a body to be locked away and so preserved from corruption, not realizing
that she is also spirit, that she is a human being and so, like all others, a recipient
of gifts apportioned by the Holy Spirit, as Paul explained: "To each is given the
manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the
Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge ac-
cording to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of
healing by the one Spirit.... All these are inspired by one and the same Spirit
who apportions to each one individually as he wills" (1 Cor. 12.7-11).
What gift was given to Maria? In the fleshly understanding of Abraham and
Effrem, none-or at best the possibility of successfully imitating the Virgin Mary.
Had her young life progressed like Hrotsvit's, who can say what gifts might have
been revealed? That Maria has the gift of powerful faith is clear from her own
words in the brothel, "Si ulla promerendae spes veniae inesset, studium poenitendi
minime deesset" (7.10; "if I had the slightest hope of forgiveness, / I would throw
myself / Into a fervor of repentance!"), and is manifest in her penance, but I believe
Hrotsvit has given her another talent in accord with Paul's doctrine of gifts "for
the common good (ad utilitatem)," which is also a fulfillment of the identity held
in her name. Maria's penance works outward and affects others. Although she is
enclosed in her tiny cell, her penance radiates into the world and transforms sin-
ners: "Whoever hears her laments now, / His heart is sure to bleed with her; /
Whoever feels with her her pain and her repentance, / Must needs be pained too.
/ ... She tries with all her strength to become an example of repentance / For
those for whom she was once the cause of damnation" (9.3-4; "Quisquis eius
lamenta intellegit, mente vulneratur; quisquis conpunctionem sentit, et ipse con-
pungitur.... Elaborat pro viribus, ut, quibus causa fuit perditionis, fiat exemplum
conversionis").
Even confined in penance, Maria is a spiritual force for the good of others. The
play ends without a closure like that in Thais (the vision of the penitent's reward
in Heaven and her death), offering instead the active penance of Maria extending
forward in time and reaching outward into the world. In this regard Maria shares
the forward vision of Sapientia. The great archetype of the female penitent for the
Middle Ages was another Maria, whose flagrant sexual sin brought her finally,
through God's grace, to grief and remorse and whose life had the power to move
sinners to penance throughout Christian history (for example, as presented in the
Great Passion Play of the Codex Buranus). As Marian Sperberg-McQueen
shrewdly suggested, the true model for Hrotsvit's Maria is Mary Magdalene. God
be praised that Hrotsvit's Maria was seduced, one might say, for had she not fallen,
the talent entrusted to her, the power to bring others to penance, would never
have been used.
Thais
The general similarity of story in Maria and Thais-an old hermit brings a
young harlot to penance-led earlier scholars to regard the latter play as a weak
reprise of the former.36 Kuhn rejects this view, suggesting that Thais is Hrotsvit's
finest female figure (p. 95), and Dronke objects, "The two plays ... are very
different in characterization and tone," noting the didactic moment in Thais that
offers "the theme of cosmic harmony" (p. 295, n. 18). With respect to the enormity
of sexual sin and the severity of immured penance, Thais is Maria raised several
degrees. Interesting and important differences are the complete lack of background
for the heroine (we first meet Thais at the height of her career and never glimpse
her past), the contrast of Pafnutius and Abraham, the carefully drawn picture of
Thais's last moments and of the blessedness awaiting her, and, of course, the "mu-
sic lesson" at the start of the play, which is far more weighty than the onomastic
ploy by Abraham and Effrem early in Maria.37
Modern scholarship has rescued the music lesson from earlier condemnations,
and a consensus now endorses H. Homeyer's praise: "Man kann das oft als iiber-
fliissig bezeichnete 'Vorspiel' ... als das Muster einer Exposition bezeichnen, die
den Inhalt des Stiickes geistig vorbereitet. Der Erorterung folgt die eigentliche
Handlung als Exemplum" (pp. 324-25). David Chamberlain has shown in detail
how the music lesson "introduces Boethian ideas and images that recur abun-
dantly, though often implicitly, in the rest of the play and create a brilliantly unified
whole."38 Hrotsvit's learned prologue supplies the program of the drama that
follows; hence it is important for understanding the program of her series dra-
matica as a whole.
The career of the notorious prostitute does not grieve Pafnutius so much for
moral reasons as for philosophical ones. Her actions, and the reactions of besotted
men, constitute an affront or wrong to the Creator, "iniuria factoris" (1.1). God,
according to Pafnutius, has made a harmonious creation in which opposed parts
exist in concord: in the macrocosm, the elements; in the human being, the body
and the soul (corpus, anima, 1.4-5). In fact, body and soul are not true contraries,
being parts of a unity ("nec illa contraria esse fatemur," 1.5; "We will not call
these contrary either"). Hrotsvit speaks here, and throughout the play, of the
material human body (corpus), not of the theological substance, flesh (caro). Her
distinction between body and flesh is crucial for understanding not only Thais but
all her plays, for although the body often acts the part of the flesh, they are not
identical, and (as we have seen) spiritual sins also belong to the opera carnis.
Thais is profoundly discordant with God's plan because her corporality has
36 "Das Stuck ist nur 'ein Abklatsch des Abraham' " (Radle, Verfasserlexikon, p. 205, quoting Karl
Strecker). Katharina M. Wilson, "Hrotsvit and the Artes: Learning ad usum meliorem," in The Worlds
of Medieval Women, ed. Constance H. Berman et al. (Morgantown, W.Va., 1985), pp. 3-13, refers
to "the critical contempt in which these plays [Thais, Sapientia] have been held" (p. 3).
37 On these and other dissimilarities, see Homeyer, p. 322.
38 David Chamberlain, "Musical Learning and Dramatic Action in Hrotsvit's Pafnutius," Studies in
Philology 77 (1980), 319-43, here p. 321. Without benefit of insight into Hrotsvit's Boethian philos-
ophizing, Rudolf Alexander Schroder sensed that Thais was "durchaus von einem inneren Schematis-
mus beherrscht[]" (Gesammelte Werke in fiinfBdnden [Berlin, 1952], 2:778).
overwhelmed her entire being. This discord has generated not only her lust and
avarice but also lechery, prodigality, and violence in men-her crowds of lovers
("greges amatorum," 1.25) waste their substance on her; they fight with fists and
weapons so that the threshold of the brothel flows with their blood (1.26). They
are like animals in rut. No wonder later tastes have given aesthetic judgment in
favor of Maria, with its relative "realism," for Thais and the perturbations she
causes are larger than life. Hrotsvit meant them to be so, for Thais represents the
principle of discord, just as Pafnutius represents the principle of harmony. He
understands his task to be the restoration of musica humana (1.10, 17) in her; as
he explains to his disciples, this music exists "in compagine corporis et animae"
(1.17; "In the harmonious connection between body and soul"), this being the
human instance of universal music: "musica dicitur convenientia non solum
vocum, sed etiam aliarum dissimilium rerum" (1.17, my emphasis; "music is in
fact an agreeable combination / Not only of voices, / But of other unlike elements
as well").39 The plan of Thais, then, is to reveal first the harmony of body and
soul destroyed, with Pauline works of the flesh resulting (both corporal: fornicatio,
luxuria; and spiritual: inimicitiae, irae), then musica humana restored as penance
brings body and soul into their original "harmonious connection," compago cor-
poris et animae.40
Hrotsvit tells us nothing of Thais's background, and it is wrong to question the
abruptness with which she changes heart (Pafnutius has only to mention Hell, and
she cries, "Vae, vae mihi infelici!" 3.5; "Alas! Alas! Oh, what a wretched creature
I am!"). Psychological plausibility is irrelevant here. Thais has Christian faith-
it is she who first mentions God (Deus verus, 3.4), who knows of his omniscience
and that "[h]e weighs each man's merits / In the scale of his divine justice / And
gives to each one, according to what he has done, either punishment or prize,"
3.4; "Aestimo ipsius aequitatis lance singulorum merita pensari et unicuique,
prout gessit, sive supplicium sive praemium servari"). Thais scores good marks
on this brief catechism, but she, like Maria, does not seem to be aware of the
forgiveness of sin as a Christian fundament. She has grown up in the same harshly
dualistic Christian morality as her sister of the earlier play. Because her mind and
spirit are not evil, she wants just a nudge to correct the grave disharmony of her
life, and Pafnutius provides it. Maria plainly suffers because of the negligence of
her mentors; we cannot say that, or anything like it, for Thais, because we do not
observe her earlier life. What we do observe is "the dissimilia of Thais' lustful
outward behavior and her inner knowledge of God, that is ... the discord of her
musica humana of body and soul" (Chamberlain, p. 334). Once Pafnutius has
guided her to actions that bring her body and its behavior into harmony with her
spirit, this aspect of the problem is resolved. There remains the necessary satisfac-
39 Remarkably, this definition appears to be original with Hrotsvit, although closely related to
learned tradition. See Chamberlain, "Musical Learning," pp. 328-30.
40 Cf. Chamberlain, ibid., p. 331: "Most important ... is the 'compago' of body and soul, those
most 'contrariae partes' out of which man is blended together. The relationship of soul and body will
be a major aspect of the action that follows."
tio for her spectacular lechery and avarice,41 immurement: "sola in angusta retru-
datur cellula.... Nullus introitus, nullus relinquatur aditus, sed solummodo ex-
igua fenestra" (7.5-6; "She should be fitted into a narrow, solitary cell ... [with]
neither entrance nor exit, but only a narrow window"). Penitential immurement
is appropriate here, as it was for Maria after her prostitution.
Pafnutius's prayer, which ends the play, affirms concord between body and soul
as the essence of each person. He prays for both components of Thais's being:
"Grant, I pray, to the various parts of this human being- / This woman whose
body must dissolve- / A happy journey home.... / May her soul, taken up into
Heaven, / Mingle with the joys of the heavenly host. / May her body be nursed in
peace / Within the soft lap of the earth, its own matter" (13.3; "da diversas partes
huius solvendae hominis prospere repetere principium sui originis, quo et anima
caelitus indita caelestibus gaudiis intermisceatur, et corpus in molli gremio terrae,
suae materiae, pacife foveatur"). Pafnutius looks in hope beyond the separation
of these parts at death to their new harmony at the resurrection and seeks that
Thais be raised as the human being she was, but perfected ("Thais resurgat per-
fecta, ut fuit, homo," 13.4; "Then this very Thais, in her own human body, / Will
rise again, perfect at last"). Hrotsvit ends this play with a remarkable affirmation
of the human being and of human life, even when they hold great sinfulness, by
changing the years of Thais's penance from tradition's four to three, which, when
linked to the four celestial maidens at Thais's bed in the vision of Paul (11.2),
yields the diatessaron, the musical proportion 4:3, rich in philosophical and theo-
logical implications.42 The conflict of flesh and spirit in this play is primarily be-
tween corpus and anima; the body has achieved dominance before the play starts,
but the spirit, activated by Pafnutius, fights back vigorously to restore the com-
pago that is the will of the Creator, overcoming avarice as well as lechery.
Hrotsvit's subtly nuanced plays examine the contest of flesh and spirit in several
forms as demonstrated in persons of very different characteristics. Least problem-
atic are the hilarious virgins who hurry to their martyrdom-Agape and her sis-
ters, the children of Sapientia. God is their armor, and they are impassible. Hrotsvit
understands them as a human ideal only insofar as they show the amazing power
of divine grace. Few persons indeed can "swim about happily / Unharmed in the
boiling pitch. / And instead of its fierce heat / ... feel the freshness of the morning
dew" (Sapientia 5.11; "Ecce, illaesa inter ferventem liquorem ludens nato, et pro
vi caumatis sentio matutini refrigerium roris"). People do suffer in adversity, for
41 We should not overlook the fact of avarice (in Thais) and prodigality (in her lovers). She has
amassed a fortune, four hundred pounds of gold (4.3), and publicly destroys it in their presence. As
Pafnutius observes, "0, quam mutata es ab illa, quae prius eras, quando ... avaritiae calore aestu-
abas!" (3.12; "Oh, how different you are now / From the way you were before, / When you ... were
hot with the passion of greed! "). Thais's sinfulness is not only corporal-that is, her spirit also contests
with the flesh regarding the right relationship to material goods.
42 Chamberlain, "Musical Learning," pp. 340-41: "She wins the four of eternal virtue or wisdom
by means of the three of her harsh penance.... [Hrotsvit] may also have thought of signifying in her
4:3 the three Platonic faculties of soul brought to wisdom or bliss in the perfected, or purified, four
cardinal virtues.... Or she might have thought of the three Augustinian faculties of soul ... brought
to harmony by the four cardinal virtues."
agonies of body and mind are real, and it is a serious misunderstanding of Hrotsvit
to suggest that she holds up the virgin martyrs as a model for her sisters at Gan-
dersheim, much less for Christians in the world at large. They are ideal figures in
the distance of legend.43
Her interest is with the flawed and suffering men and women we remember
after reading the plays-Gallicanus, who abandons his gods and forswears love
for the sake of the faith, but who knows he must remove himself from Constantia
to control temptation; Terentianus, agent of the Old Adam, whose son is tortured
by demons until he accepts baptism; Drusiana, agonized by her inability to tran-
scend her sexual self; Calimachus, too passionate to refuse an act that shames him;
Sapientia, who must witness the death of her children and bury them; Thais, whose
fabulous vitality has drawn her deep into sin; and, of course, Maria, most like
Hrotsvit, a child of promise but buried alive to protect her from her sexuality, by
God's grace given the talent of penance to afflict and convert others, and so to
imitate the biblical model of the Magdalene.44
Hrotsvit's first and last plays concern the empire as it is transformed from the
standard of the flesh to that of the spirit. These plays deserve close study in con-
nection with her Gesta Ottonis, which she wrote at very nearly the same time.45
Hrotsvit did not first discover an interest in the philosophy of imperial history
when she was asked by Gerberga to write the Gesta. With the abbess's close
connection to Otto I and his court, and with the special relationship of Ganders-
heim to the Ottonian dynasty, there can be no doubt that imperial politics were a
subject of deep Christian interest for Hrotsvit and her circle. "[Hrotsvit] hat-
und auch das ist wichtig zur Beurteilung ihres Verstandnisses fiir die Zeitereig-
nisse-eine klare Vorstellung von der sakralen Bedeutung des Kaisertums; ihre
Konzeption entspricht der Auffassung des Kreises, in dem sie sich bewegte....
Die Dichterin stand nicht in einem leeren Raum; sie lebte in einem Kreis hochge-
bildeter Manner und Frauen, die an den Zeitereignissen innerlich und aufierlich
43 See Patricia Demers, "In virginea forma: The Salvific Feminine in the Plays of Hrotswitha of
Gandersheim and Hildegard of Bingen," in Relmagining Women: Representations of Women in Cul-
ture, ed. Shirley Neuman and Glennis Stephenson (Toronto, 1993), pp. 45-60: "The heroic feats of
these athletes of Christ [the martyrs in Sapientia] . . . put them closer to superhuman paragons than
approachable models" (p. 54).
44 I would even place Dulcitius in the list of flawed characters whose humanity we share. Overcome
by the girls' beauty, he desires them and becomes a broadly comic figure in four scenes (his delusions
in the pantry, terror of his soldiers, abuse by palace guards, and scolding by his wife). His lust proves
him a man of the flesh, but he is neither arrogant like Diocletian nor cruel like Sisinnius. He wants the
girls to be stripped, but only so they will be mocked as he had been. He is foolishly lustful and foolishly
proud, but he plays no role in the tortures or executions.
45 Dronke, Women Writers, p. 75: "The Gesta, composed ca. 965 and concluded before 968, are
generally held to be later than both the legends and the plays." Radle places the plays in the years
following the completion of the legends (962) and before the completion of the Gesta in 968 (Verfas-
serlexikon, p. 198). Bertini follows this approximate chronology and finds inner coherence between
the three: "das Versepos [stellt] die ideale Fortfiihrung des Diskurses dar, der mit den Heiligenlegenden
eingesetzt hatte und mit den dramatischen Dialogen weitergesponnen worden war" ("Hrotsvith, die
Dichterin," p. 133). But see the quite different chronology of Wilson, Ethics (above, n. 21), p. 145,
asserting (implausibly) that Hrotsvit wrote all her plays as well as five legends between 963 and 965.
teilnahmen."46 The political plays should be understood as one expression of that
interest, differing from the Gesta in obvious ways but like it in the conviction that
God has guided events in the past of imperial history as he does in the present.
Each of the emperors who comes on stage is a foil to the Ottonians-Julian,
Diocletian, and Hadrian representing the world's past age, Constantine the great
initiator of Christian government. Against the old empire's opera carnis in these
plays-idolatry, impurity, lechery, envy, wrath, homicide-stand the fructus Spi-
ritus of the Christian characters: "caritas gaudium pax longanimitas bonitas be-
nignitas fides modestia continentia" (Gal. 5.22). Hrotsvit associates both fleshly
works and spiritual fruits with specific characters and dramatic events.
The biographical reductionism that led earlier scholars to contend that Hrotsvit,
a virgin in a virginal community, advanced virginity as the basic theme (Grundthe-
ma) of her plays has brought about serious misapprehension of the imperial
dramas. It has also distorted perception of the problems in her erotic plays. Hrots-
vit revered the ascetic tradition in Christian culture but did not think that sensu-
ality was the gravest human problem or asceticism the finest kind of merit. She
believed that, God having created human bodies as well as human souls, it was
possible for men and women to live in a harmony of those parts, a convenientia
dissimilium rerum. Every ascetic had a father and a mother, after all, and in the
world of her plays Constantine begot Constantia, Gallicanus fathered two daugh-
ters, Sapientia conceived and gave birth three times, Drusiana knew sexual plea-
sure with her husband and desired Calimachus, Maria and Thais knew sexual
pleasure with their clients, and Maria perhaps with her seducer. All except Con-
stantine achieve laudabilis castimonia, but none of these heroes and heroines en-
ters Heaven as a virgin. Taken together, the sexual plays study the disharmony of
body and soul that afflicts human beings-not only the excess of carnality in
Calimachus and the prostitutes, but also the soul's hostility toward the body in
the extremism of Abraham and Effrem. These problems are part of the great
contest of spirit and flesh, but the life of the spirit, which must prevail in Chris-
tians, does not make the body simply the enemy. Body and soul, as Pafnutius
observed, are not contraria; once linked in the convenientia of dissimilarities, they
can stand together against the flesh. The plays are a caution to communities of
virgins (such as at Gandersheim), and to ascetic apologists, against the elevation
of sexuality to the rank of supreme issue in Christian life. Without question they
celebrate chastity, but just as certainly they present a discerning vision of good
and evil in human life that accords due weight (and no more) to the sexual drive
and its discipline.
Hrotsvit did have a dramatic program, as Hugo Kuhn and most scholars have
maintained. She wrote the same number of plays as Terence, taking enough of his
techniques and mannerisms to remind her audience of him and exploring the
46 Homeyer, pp. 399 and 401. Cf. Patzold (above, n. 5), pp. 25-26: "Bei der exponierten Stellung
Gandersheims zum Herrscherhaus ergab es sich zwangslaufig, daig man sich mit aktuellen Problemen
der politischen Ideologie, wie sie Herrschaftslegitimierung und Reichsauffassung darstellten, beschaf-
tigte.... Mit der Erlangung der r6mischen Kaiserkrone 962 durch Otto I. wurde in Hrotsvits Augen
letztendlich auch das Imperium Romanum aufrechterhalten und fortgesetzt."
Christian content of plots analogous to his-the familiar sobriquet "Christian

Terence" is to that extent defensible. Her originality, however, resides in her in-
terpretation of legendary sources according to her deeper and more differentiated
grasp of human life as a contest between the principles of flesh and spirit. The
study of this contest, whether in the heart of the individual or in the governance
of the world, unifies her plays and constitutes the theme of her program.
Stephen L. Wailes is Professor of Germanic Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington,

IN 47405-6601 (e-mail: [email protected]).

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Beyond Virginity: Flesh and Spirit in the Plays of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim

Author(s): Stephen L. Wailes

1 First published in Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift fir Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 24

ample-"none of what Hrotsvitha claims, ostensibly solemnly, at the opening of

10 David Knowles, "Introduction," Concerning the City of God, p. xvii.

THE IMPERIAL PLAYS

Agape, Chionia, and Hirena

THE PLAYS OF SEXUALITY

Sexual desire, present as an ancillary factor in the political dramas, is central to

spirit-sexuality sets Hrotsvit's stage. Calimachus, a pagan, passionately loves

31 I reviewed current understanding of immurement in medieval Germany in an earlier essay: "Im-

contemporaries of Hrotsvit is clear: immurement was understood as the final, most

Christian content of plots analogous to his-the familiar sobriquet "Christian

Stephen L. Wailes is Professor of Germanic Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington,

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