OF SIX MEDIÆVAL 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 Charlemagne, 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 Frankish kingdom of Charlemagne bowed down before the strenuous Saxons, to whom the supreme power was transferred. 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 Frankish rule, received the Imperial Crown from the Pope in
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