HROSVITHA (ros-veth'a) (RoswITHA, properly HROT SUIT) (c. 935—c. 1002), German dramatist and chronicler. Some time before 959 she entered the Benedictine nunnery of Ganders heim, a foundation highly favoured by the Saxon dynasty, and lived there until her death about the turn of the century. She wrote eight narrative religious poems, in leonine hexameters or distichs, dealing with the Nativity of the Virgin (from the apocryphal gospel of St. James, the brother of our Lord), the Ascension and a series of legends of saints (Gandolph, Pelagius, Theophilus, Basil, Denis, Agnes). Her comedies are six in num ber, being doubtless in this respect intended to recall their nominal model, the comedies of Terence. They are written in prose, with an element of something like rhythm, and an occasional admixture of rhyme. Founded upon legends of the saints, and exhibiting a knowledge of the Fathers and of Christian philosophers, they nevertheless contain many elements of comedy and even of farce, though they were written to glorify virginity. How far Hrosvitha's comedies were an isolated phenomenon of their age in Germany is uncertain, but in the history of the drama they form the bridge between the few earlier attempts at utilizing the forms of the classical drama for Christian purposes and the miracle plays.
The third group of the writings of Hrosvitha contains her versified historical chronicles. At the request of the abbess Ger berga, she composed her Carmen de gestis Oddonis, an epic at tempting to follow the great Roman model. It was completed by 968, and presented by the authoress both to the old emperor and to his son (then already crowned as) Otto II. Unfortunately only half of it remains; the part treating of the period from 953 to 962 is lost with the exception of a few fragments, and the period from 962 to 967 is summarized only. Subsequently, in a poem (of 837 hexameters) De primordiis et fundatoribus coenobii Ganders heimensis, Hrosvitha narrated the beginnings of her own convent, and its history up to 919.
The Munich ms., which contains all the above works except the Chronicle of Gandersheim, was edited by Conrad Celtes, in 15o1 and printed at Nuremberg, with eight wood-cuts presumably by Durer. It was re-edited by H. L. Schurzfleisch and published at Wittenberg in 1707. The comedies have been edited and translated into German by J. Bendixen (Lubeck, 1857), and into French by C. Magnin (1845) with a good introduction. See also Hrosvitha's Poesies latines, with French translation by V. Retif de la Bretonne (1854) . Her two chroni cles in verse were edited by Z. H. Pertz in the Monumenta Germaniae, iv. (Hanover, 1841) . See also J. P. Migne, Patrol. Lat. vol. 137. The Carmen was included by Leibnitz in his Scriptores rer. Brunsvic. (Han over, 1707-1i). For other early editions see A. Potthast, Bibliotheca historica medii aevi (supplement, 1862-68) ; and for an appreciation of them see Wattenbach, Geschichtsquellen, pp. 214-216. There are mod ern editions of Hrosvitha's works by P. von Winterfeld (1902) and by K. Strecker (1906) ; and German translations of the chronicle by Pfund (186o, new ed. 1891) and of the comedies by Piltz in Reclam's Uni versal Bibliothek. See Eng. translations of the plays by Christopher St. John (1923 with good introduction) and by H. J. W. Tillyard (1923). See also J. Schneiderhan, Roswitha von Gandersheim, die erste deutsche Dichterin (Paderborn 1912) .