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It is only a slight development of the elegy in dialogue which was performed in A.D. 874, at the funeral of Hathumoda, the first abbess of Gandersheim. This dialogue takes place between the sorrow-stricken nuns, who speak in chorus of their loss, and the monk Wichbert, who acts as consoler.
And then, before obtaining the money needful for the work, he at once set out the lines of a noble church as traced by the splendour of the red light. The first foundation, afterwards removed to Gandersheim. For other instances of churches laid out on lines said to have been revealed in dreams or visions, see Didron, Christian Iconography, vol. i. pp. 381, 382, 460, and Sta. Maria Maggiore, Rome.
In others again, though residence was permanent, short leave of absence from time to time was granted by the abbess, and the nun was able to sojourn with her friends, or to visit some sister community. But at Gandersheim the rule was strict, and a nun, her vows once taken, had to remain within the convent walls.
But judging from analogy, there seems to be no reason why they should not have been. We know that as early as the fifth and sixth centuries the monks played Terence, probably on some fête-day, or before their scholars as a means of instruction, and doubtless Roswitha’s plays were also acted on special occasions, such as when the Emperor sojourned at Gandersheim, or the Bishop made a visitation.
In one place, apparently not far from Wolfenbüttel, the needfire is said to have been kindled, contrary to custom, by the smith striking a spark from the cold anvil. At Gandersheim down to about the beginning of the nineteenth century the need-fire was lit in the common way by causing a cross-bar to revolve rapidly on its axis between two upright posts.
This is of interest here because the bishops of Hildesheim were specially appointed to perform the office of consecration of nuns at Gandersheim.
People flocked from all quarters to enjoy the gratuitous entertainments, and a form of sacred musical art resulted that derived from them its name. Roswitha, a nun of the Gandersheim cloister, in the tenth century, made the earliest attempt recorded to invest church plays with artistic worth.
Of any participation of women in intellectual life there could be no question until the Renaissance, although we do meet here and there with isolated exceptions, a few ladies of high degree like Roswitha of Gandersheim and Hadwig, Duchess of Swabia, niece of Otto the Great, and Heloise. The learning was exclusively scholastic, and from any share in that women were barred.
But what bearing, it may be asked, had Court life on the life of the nun Roswitha in the convent of Gandersheim? To answer this question we must recall briefly the position of the early religious houses, and especially those of Saxony. Many of the foundations were royal, and, in return for certain privileges, were obliged to entertain the king and his retinue whenever he journeyed.
Be this as it may, her life for us begins when, probably at an early age, she entered the Convent of Gandersheim. Gandersheim was a Benedictine nunnery in the Harz Mountains, founded in the ninth century by Liudolf, Duke of Saxony, and important enough to entitle its Abbess to a Seat in the Imperial Diet, a right perhaps never exercised except by proxy.
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