ROSWITHA THE NUN
made to two of them—the Passion of St. Pelagius of Cordova, and the Fall and Conversion of Theophilus—since their subject matter is of value to us to-day. The one interests us because, in relating that the story was told her by an eye-witness of the martyrdom in A.D. 925 (Acta SS. Jun. V.), she shows that communication existed between that great intellectual centre, Cordova, and Germany, a fact that must have had considerable influence on art and literature; the other as being the story out of which the Faust legend was developed.
After these legends, we turn to her panegyric on the Emperor Otho. This she opens by acknowledging her debt to the Abbess Gerberg, niece of Otho the Great, for aiding her in her literary work with her superior knowledge, and for giving her the necessary information concerning the royal doings. Then by humbly likening her mental perplexity and fear on entering upon so vast a subject to the feelings of one who has to cross a forest in winter when snow has obliterated the track, she in a few words pictures for us the natural wooded surroundings of the convent. Her poem—for such it really is—then sets forth the personal history of this monarch and his predecessors, rather than public events, and is thus of value more on account of its poetical than its historical quality. But one episode, picturesque in its quaint setting, and interesting historically because its stirring details are not to be found elsewhere, is worthy
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