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It is impossible to develop character with any continuity when the supernatural, like some sword of Damocles, hovers continually overhead, ready to descend at any moment and sever cause from effect. Such a sword was the Divine Presence to Roswitha.
This mere outline of the play is given to suggest points of resemblance between it the first sketch of this kind of drama of passion, the frenzy of the soul and senses and the masterpiece of this type, Romeo and Juliet. Many passages in the plays of Roswitha remind us of Shakespeare, but it is not possible to deal adequately with them here, nor does it seem material to do so.
The following pages tell of six such women who lived between the tenth century and the first half of the fifteenth Roswitha, a nun of Germany; Marie de France, a lady at the Court of Henry the Second of England; Mechthild of Magdeburg, mystic and beguine; Mahaut, Countess of Artois, a great-niece of St.
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.
It seems hardly possible that Roswitha could have seen its gifted bishop Bernward, himself a painter, and a worker in mosaic and metals, though owing to the uncertainty of the date of her death one chronicler making it as late as 1002 it is just possible that she may have done so.
Bidding defiance to all difficulty and danger, she contrives gradually to dig a secret way through the soft earth, and suddenly finds herself free. Dawn is just breaking. But how can she make use of her freedom before her guards awake and discover her escape? Quickly is her mind made up. But let Roswitha herself tell the story:
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.
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.
The story of its foundation, as told by Roswitha in the unique MS. of her works, is of strange beauty. Listen to her own words as she tells the tale: The authenticity of these has been called in question by some critics, but apparently upon insufficient data.
Early Literature; Translation of the Bible by Ulphilas; the Hildebrand Lied. 2. The Age of Charlemagne; his Successors; the Ludwig's Lied; Roswitha; the Lombard Cycle. 3. The Suabian Age; the Crusades; the Minnesingers; the Romances of Chivalry; the Heldenbuch; the Nibelungen Lied. 4.
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