Hrotsvit of Gandersheim and Philosophy

Abstract

Hrotsvit of Gandersheim sees music and arithmetic as parts of philosophy. Presenting the motives for engaging in literary creativity and describing her writing process, she says that by glorifying God with her work, she incorporated threads and pieces of the ancient mantle of philosophy into it. The paper aims to provide insight into Hrotsvit’s knowledge of philosophy and the specificities and significance of her approach to the contents of the disciplines of arithmetic and music (in particular to musica humana and the harmony of a world) in her plays Paphnutius and Sapientia, to analyze different elements of her authorial self-perception and to emphasize the similarities between her and Augustine’s understanding of music, and the role of certain types of writing. The paper concludes that Hrotsvit incorporated her knowledge and understanding of ancient and medieval theories of music and numbers into her plays uniquely, showing originality in their interpretation and merging them with everyday moral life and education. In this way, the rarely treated philosophical elements of her oeuvre are presented and evaluated.