Body and Empire in the Works of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim

Gendered bodies, bloodlines, religion

On 2 February 962, Otto I (912-973) became crowned Holy Roman Emperor at Rome: the first Reich was coming into being. Otto's empire linked German territories with most of Italy. Its continuation depended upon close cooperation with Rome and the harnessing of Christianity as state-sponsored ideological superstructure. Having little patience for too much papal independence, Otto I did not hesitate to curtail recalcitrant papal powers to serve his own political ends. It is in this nexus of imperial politics and religion that I wish to place Hrotsvit of Gandersheim's writings and identity as a female author. To that purpose, I offer a reading of her works across the three genres in which she wrote—legends, plays, and historiography. ¹

Among the chroniclers of his reign, Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (ca. 935-after 973) is the only woman—a fact that is nothing short of extraordinary. Anna Komnena (1083-1148) is the only other imperial female court historiographer in Europe known today. ² Murasaki Shikibu (ca. 980-
1015), a near contemporary of Hrotsvit, chronicled court politics and mores in Japan. Several centuries later, the first Western professional female author, Christine de Pizan (1364-ca. 1430), left us commissioned works on royal history, warfare, and court politics.

With the exception of the first five of her legends, composed before 959, all of Hrotsvit's works were written in the shadow of Otto I's imperial rule (963-73). ³ During the decade of Hrotsvit's most active literary productivity, the Saxon ruler increased the centralization of royal power by subduing and unifying dukes ruling over other Germanic tribes. Otto I also reversed the ecclesiastical politics of his father Heinrich I by expanding the rights and wealth of the church. In return for imperial favors, the ecclesiastical elites provided military and financial services.

As elsewhere in Europe, Germanic society before and during Ottonian rule was militaristic, characterized by fluctuating alliances among tribal leaders locked in a constant need to expand their own territories and to defend them against intruders and competitors. ⁴ The implications for women's status, with the exception of aristocratic women, appear to have been negative. ⁵ Scholars agree that in terms of gender arrangements, a war-based social order tends to devalue femininity and male effeminacy. ⁶ The result is a decline in the esteem of women and scorn for receptive (i.e., "feminized") homosexuality. ⁷ Hrotsvit perhaps tried to point to the ideological nature of such asymmetry: "And it does not become a fragile woman placed in the seclusion of a monastery, to write about [the intricacies of] war, which she should not know about [Sed nec hoc fragilis fas esse reor mulieris / Inter coenobii positae secreta quieti, / Ut bellum dictet, quod nec cognoscere debet] (Gesta Ottonis 243-45; 415). Although she denies that she can write about war, religious and military violence permeates Hrotsvit's writings. Knowledge about war and thus exposure to war could not be escaped even by the gender ill prepared to face it.

Saxony, the home of the Ottonian ruling house and Hrotsvit's family, maintains a special status in the history of Christianity due to the ruthless violence of Charlemagne's expansionist politics, including forced conversions that began a mere century and a half before Hrotsvit's birth. Charlemagne's Saxonian Wars lasted from 772 to 804 and are marked by two especially harrowing events: the destruction of the Irminsul and the massacre of rebellious Saxons betrayed by their leaders at Verden in 782. ⁸ Charlemagne's Saxonian Capitulary made it a capital offense to refuse baptism, to cremate the dead, to participate in pagan rituals, and to eat meat during Lent. ⁹ Of course, other non-Christian religious systems, whether Christianity's Abrahamitic siblings, Judaism and Islam, or the tribal religions encountered through the invading...