Hrosvit

Tenth-century nun and poetess who lived at Gandersheim in Saxony. She took as her model the literary style of Terence, but she was very familiar with all the leading Latin poets and with Holy Scripture. One of her main aims was to oppose Terence's descriptions of the frailty of women by portraying the courage and chastity of Christian virgins. After her death she was quickly forgotten, but Conrad Celtes, the humanist, discovered a Latin manuscript of her writings at Ratisbon which was printed in 1501. One of her poems, “Passio Sancti Pelagii,” claims to be based on the report of an eyewitness account of the martyrdom. There is an English translation of her plays by H.J.W. Tillyard (1923) and of her other works by Sister Gonsalva Wiegand (1936).