Hey there!
My name is Mike Rugnetta, this is Crash Course Theater and Last time, we looked at how the
liturgical drama—specifically a call-and-response section smuggled into the Easter liturgy—helped
bring theater back to the West.
Today we’ll look at another way theater got snuck back into the Christian world.
Who did the sneaking?
A canoness!
What is a canoness?
It’s a fancy kind of nun!
Not often known for their sneaking, right?
All those surprising sneaks took place in an abbey, in an otherwise unremarkable spot
in Lower Saxony, Germany.
You can still visit it today, if you want!
Enjoy the half-timbered houses, and if you’re old enough, raise a beer stein to Hrotsvitha,
the Loud Cry of Gandersheim—the queen of medieval closet drama and the world’s first
female playwright.
Well, the first we know about, anyway.
I hear there was lots of sneaking!
INTRO Hrotsvitha was born in Saxony around the 10th
century.
We don’t know how she came to take the veil, because record-keeping wasn’t really medieval
Saxony’s jam.
We do know Hrotsvitha’s name literally means “strong honor,” ... but she decided it
meant something more like “the clarion call” or “the loud cry.” - which I mean, hey,
all of these?
Very STRONG CONTENDERS if you ask me.
At some point, She joined the convent at Gandersheim as a canoness, giving her the freedom to own
property, keep servants and wear whatever kind of wimple she wanted.
Yeah, it’s good to be the canoness.
She studied under two women at the convent, including the abbess, and became exceptionally
well-read.
Moreover, she read diversely—the Bible, sure, and the writings of the church fathers
and the noncanonical gospels, but also contemporary histories and secular Latin greats, too, like
Ovid and Virgil.
She even read our old friends Plautus and Terence.
But those comedies were a little troubling for Hrotsvitha—so much lewd behavior—so
… she decided to write her own versions!
We’re going to talk about those in two shakes of a saxon sheeps tail.
In addition to plays, she also wrote verse legends and histories–one about Otto I,
the Holy Roman Emperor, and another about her own convent–all of them in careful meter.
She’s the first playwright of the Middle Ages and if later woodcuts are anything to
go by, her taste in wimples was, in fact …. divine.
Hrotsvitha’s plays are known as the Comaedia Sacrae, or Sacred Comedies.
Hrotsvitha loved comedy.
I mean, she loved God, too, of course.
But she also loved Terence, who you may remember was a more polite writer than his contemporary
Plautus—fewer dirty jokes, less adultery.
But still based on secular subjects, and that made Hrotsvitha worry that her love for them
was somehow harmful to her faith and the faith of others.
She wrote in a preface that she knew a lot of Catholics were “attracted by the polished
elegance of the style of pagan writers”—so attracted that they might prefer Terence to
holy scripture.
This is maybe selling short how much weird violence and sex stuff persists in holy scripture,
but ok, that’s weird violence and sex stuff that’s IN a holy text so point taken I guess?
. Hrotsvitha warned that readers who were charmed
by polished pagan elegance, risked “being corrupted by the wickedness of the matter.”
So she thought, “Hey, maybe I’ll use my loud cry to write plays in the meter and style
of Terence.
Maybe they can be funny.
But also holy!”
We believe in you, Hrotsvitha!
Care to guess what theme might interest a nun who has made herself a bride of Christ?
That’s right.
Chastity!
If Terence is going to write about “the shameless acts of licentious women”, Hrotsvitha
is going to write about virgins, and also ~unchaste ladies~ who repent and embrace chastity.
Basically: it’s just a little bit of medieval slut shaming...
It’s clear that love and sex fascinate Hrotsvitha.
In her preface, she blushes to admit her work has forced her to think about “the dreadful
frenzy of those possessed by unlawful love, and the insidious sweetness of passion—things
which should not even be named among us.”
Sister, please!
But she argues that only by coming to grips with lust can she demonstrate how much more
wonderful “the divine succor” is of those who resist it.
Whether or not Hrotsvitha’s works were performed has been the subject of debate.
Most scholars believe that Hrotsvitha wrote her plays to be read, a genre we call closet
dramas.
After all, that’s how she encountered Terence’s plays—in book form, not on stage.
It’s probable that her work was read aloud, and remotely possible that it was performed
privately in the Medieval period.
But since the late 19th-century, her plays have been performed pretty often.
At one point the art collective the Guerrilla Girls–who are rad as heck and if you don’t
know them, Sarah did an awesome Art Assignment video on them–they offered a prize to any
theater who would switch out a Greek tragedy written by a man for one of Hrotsvitha’s
comedies.
One of those comedies is called Dulcitius.
Critics regard this as her funniest play, even though it … describes the martyrdom
of three young women.
And yet: kind of a knee-slapper.
Dulcitius is based on, and named after, an historical figure: the Roman governor of Macedonia
in the late third and early fourth century, known for persecuting Christian women.
And the young women in the play are actual Christian martyrs, though IRL they died a
century before Dulcitius came to power.
So Hrotsvitha has taken some liberties.
Take us there, Thoughtbubble: Emperor Diocletian wants to arrange marriages
for three Virgin sisters: Agape, whose name means love, Irena, whose name means peace
and Chionia, whose name means snow, which basically means purity… but don’t worry
it’s about to get dark and rather randy.
Diocletian tells the sisters they have to renounce Christianity.
They don’t wanna, so he locks them up and sends Dulcitius to question them.
Dulcitius sees them through a window, decides they’re all super hot, and asks them to
be locked up in the kitchen so that he can, um, “visit” them.
Why he needed to assault them in a kitchen, specifically?
Unclear.
The sisters understandably don’t want to be perved on by Dulcitius, so they pray.
And their prayers work.
When Dulcitius enters the kitchen, he thinks that the pots and pans are the sisters.
So he starts hugging and kissing them, which covers him in soot.
When he leaves, the soldiers see his blackened face and think he’s a demon.
And so do the people at the palace.
And I mean… in a sense, they’re not wrong?
He gets the snot beat out of him.
It’s not funny, but also because of how pervy he is: it is funny.
Dulcitius goes home and finally realizes what has happened.
Fuming, he orders the sisters be stripped.
But their clothes stick to them.
Diocletian sends the torturer Sisinnius who orders Agape and Chionia to be burned at the
stake.
They die, though miraculously their clothes and bodies are left intact.
Sisinnius then orders Irena, the youngest, to convert.
She won’t, so he tells the soldiers to take her to a brothel.
Instead, she’s miraculously spirited away to a mountaintop.
Sisinnius orders the soldiers to shoot her with arrows, and she dies, but she dies secure
in her chastity and her faith.
Thank you, Thoughtbubble.
So.
See what I mean?
It is a LAUGH RIOT!
Ok, it’s no What About Bob, but for a medieval Christian, this is at least a happy ending.
The three sisters all end up dead, but the souls of Agape and Chionia are in heaven,
and as Irena is dying, she says, “I shall receive the martyr’s palm and the crown
of virginity; thus I will enter the heavenly bridal chamber of the eternal King, Whose
is all honor and glory in all eternity.”
Listen, that’s at least half as funny as like… a third of all SNL sketches.
ANYWAY - you could argue that the crown of virginity isn’t worth dying over but because
the sisters haven’t been forced to compromise their bodies or their beliefs, they will receive
eternal life.
For Hrotsvitha, and her audience, that’s sweeter than anything.
And it’s definitely sweeter than being raped by a soot-smudged Roman dolt.
It’s worth noting that this emphasis on chastity suggests it was one of a very few
ways women could wield power in the middle ages.
But this is likely more of a concern for present-day readers than for Hrotsvitha herself.
And before we end today, we’re going to look at one other medieval female playwright,
Hildegarde of Bingen.
Hildegarde, was born about a century and a half after Hrotsvitha and also had a killer
nickname: “the Sibyl of the Rhine.”
She was more than just a writer.
She was also a composer, a philosopher, a mystic and a scientist who took time off to
found and run a couple of monasteries.
She also made up her own language.
Basically, Hildegarde was a boss.
One of her plays is the catchily titled Ordo Virtutum, which is Latin for “The Order
of Virtues.”
It’s the only liturgical drama that survives alongside its music, which Hildegarde also
composed.
It’s LOVELY!
Here’s a quick listen.
[PAUSE] The Order of Virtues is the first surviving
example of the medieval morality play, a genre we’ll look at more in depth in the next
episode.
It’s an allegorical drama in which Anima, the human soul, has to choose between the
Virtues and the Devil.
Guess which side Hildegarde is on?
Yeah, it’s kind of a no-brainer for Anima, too.
But the Virtues tell her that she has to go live in a body first.
Once she does, the Devil shows her how much fun worldly stuff is; only later, old and
thoroughly repentant about all that worldly pleasure, is she allowed to return to the
Virtues.
Who, by the way, are Hope, Chastity, Innocence, Contempt of the World, Celestial Love, Modesty,
Mercy, Victory, Discretion, Patience, Knowledge of God, Charity, Fear of God, Obedience, Faith,
and Discipline, though her name is scratched out in the manuscript.
But yeah, either way, big cast.
Very tidy green room, though.
Super lowkey wrap party.
As we saw in the last episode, the usual explanation for theater re-emerging in the West is through
the appearance of liturgical drama.
But in the same century, a loud cry is heard across Lower Saxony!
And a century and a half later, Hildegarde answers the call!
Hrotsvitha and Hildegard of Bingen’s works have a firmly Christian worldview and intention;
they create female characters with the power and patience and faith to make brave, chaste
choices.
So a round of applause for them.
Next time, we take a look at the cycle plays, which is what liturgical drama turns into
over a couple centuries.
But until then… curtain!