Power and Patronage in Hrotsvit of Gandersheim’s Primordia Coenebii Gandeshemensis

Abstract

Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, a Saxon canoness of Gandersheim Abbey, lived and wrote in the tenth century, and composed a number of vitae, plays, and poems, as well as two histories. The Primordia Coenebii Gandeshemensis was the second of her histories, written c. 970. This text has meaningful political and economic contexts, and it was directed at an elite, cultured audience, external to the monastery. This has been largely ignored or denied by the prevailing historiography. This intervention explores the nature and importance of Hrotsvit’s ambitions as both a political actor and a stylist.