OF SIX MEDIEVAL WOMEN 



naturally not so unique as the dramas, nor do 

 they reflect her personality in the same way. 

 She herself tells us that the plays were written 

 in imitation of the manner, but not of the matter, 

 of Terence, and that her only desire in writing 

 them was " to make the small talent given her 

 by Heaven to create, under the hammer of 

 devotion, a faint sound to the praise of God." 



But before considering her work, let us glance 

 at her own life, and the life of contemporary 

 Saxon nunneries. 



Nearly one hundred and fifty years before 

 the supposed date of Roswitha's birth, the 

 hitherto untamed and warlike Saxons had been 

 finally defeated by the mercenaries of Charle- 

 magne, and, as one of the signs of submission, 

 forced to embrace Christianity. But having 

 submitted, they forthwith, and with an aptitude 

 suggestive of the spirit of the modern Japanese, 

 set themselves to appropriate, assimilate, and 

 remodel for their own use, the rudiments of the 

 civilisation with which they found themselves 

 brought into contact. So speedy and so thorough 

 was the transformation, that scarce a century 

 passed ere the once powerful Prankish kingdom 

 of Charlemagne bowed down before the strenuous 

 Saxons, to whom the supreme power was trans- 

 ferred. Their Chief was elected king of the 

 Germans, and some fifty years later their king, 

 Otho the Great, after being crowned at Aix-la- 

 Chapelle, the former centre of Prankish rule, 

 received the Imperial Crown from the Pope in 



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