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Hrotsvit of Gandersheim on the Agency of Women Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Master's Theses Graduate College 6-2017 “Clamor Validus” vs. “Fragilitas Sexus Feminei”: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim on the Agency of Women Caroline Jansen Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses Part of the Medieval History Commons Recommended Citation Jansen, Caroline, "“Clamor Validus” vs. “Fragilitas Sexus Feminei”: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim on the Agency of Women" (2017). Master's Theses. 1129. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses/1129 This Masters Thesis-Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate College at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “CLAMOR VALIDUS” VS. “FRAGILITAS SEXUS FEMINEI”: HROTSVIT OF GANDERSHEIM ON THE AGENCY OF WOMEN by Caroline Jansen A thesis submitted to the Graduate College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts The Medieval Institute Western Michigan University June 2017 Thesis committee: Eve Salisbury, Ph.D., Chair Lofton Durham, Ph.D. Rand Johnson, Ph.D. “CLAMOR VALIDUS” VS. “FRAGILITAS SEXUS FEMINEI”: HROTSVIT OF GANDERSHEIM ON THE AGENCY OF WOMEN Caroline Jansen, M.A. Western Michigan University, 2017 Hrotsvit of Gandersheim has generated interest among scholars of gender and sexuality due to her status as a woman and writer of Latin legends, epics, and plays in the Ottonian Empire. As the only prominent female playwright of her time, Hrotsvit presents an intriguing, complex treatment of female characters and their sexuality, particularly her plays, which rework both well-known lives of female saints and the tropes of the Roman playwright Terence’s comedies. One issue that has not been fully addressed, however, is the gendering of the heroines populating Hrotsvit’s plays—while some scholars refer to the characters as “overcoming femininity” others describe their heroic actions as manifesting an embracing of their femininity. However, these scholars do not seem to define fully what they consider to comprise the characters’ femininity, sometimes merely referring to “feminine weakness” as the defining trait of the gender, a very reductive treatment of how Hrotsvit and her medieval audience likely viewed gender. In this paper I analyze the gendering of Hrotsvit’s women in her plays during their trials and martyrdoms, and place it among the current scholarship on medieval female spirituality and chastity by analyzing the Latin diction and images used to describe the heroines of the plays. I argue that Hrotsvit imbues her female characters with agency and spiritual strength even while the female characters embrace bodily and spiritual femininity. Copyright by Caroline Jansen 2017 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………….....1 Historical Context…………………………………………………………………3 The Plays………………………………………………………………………….6 Medieval Virginity and Gender: An Overview…………………………………...9 Marriage and Motherhood……………………………………………………….11 Hrotsvit and Gender……………………………………………………………...14 Methodology…………………………………………………………………......19 II. THE PERFORMANCE OF VIRGINITY THROUGH SPEECH…………………...22 Interrogation in Dulcitius………………………………………………………...25 Interrogation in Sapientia………………………………………………………..36 Conclusions……………………………………………………………………...60 III. EMBODIED AGENCY……………………………………………………………..61 Male Sexual Passivity vs. Female Chaste Agency in Dulcitius………………....64 Thwarting Male Desire/Violence in Sapientia…………………………………..84 Conclusions…………………………………………………………………….113 IV. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………….115 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………...122 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Hrotsvit of Gandersheim has generated interest among scholars of gender and sexuality due to her status as a woman and writer of Latin legends, epics, and plays in the Ottonian Empire. Of this impressive body of work, Hrotsvit presents the most complex treatment of female sexuality and strength of character in her dramas. Indeed, as feminist scholars have embraced more positive readings of medieval virginity and feminine spirituality, Hrotsvit’s plays have been read as “proto-feminist” works.1 This position manifests itself when we assess the spiritual strength of the female characters who, by either overcoming or embracing the “womanly weakness” ascribed to them by social norms, are shown to be spiritually strong, particularly in terms of chastity, the virtue most commonly under threat in Hrotsvit’s plays. Hrotsvit thus declares herself the “Clamor Validus Gandeshemensis” [“Strong Voice of Gandersheim”]2 and equips her dramatic women with strong voices of their own. One issue that has not been fully addressed by feminist scholarship, however, is the gendering of the heroines of Hrotsvit’s dramas. While some scholars refer to the characters as “overcoming femininity” and thereby becoming more like men, others describe their heroic actions as enacting their femininity.3 However, many of these scholars do not seem to define 1 Helene Scheck, “The Whore as Imago Dei: Being and Abjection in Hrotsvit’s Rewriting of Thais,” in Sexuality, Sociality, and Cosmology in Medieval Literary Texts, ed. Jennifer N. Brown and Marla Segol (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 7-32 (8). 2 See H. Homeyer, ed. Hrotsvithae Opera (Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 1970), 233. All Latin translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. All Latin quotations are taken from this edition. 3 For an example of the argument wherein Hrotsvit’s women embrace their weaknesses or their weaknesses are turned into strengths, see Barbara K Gold, “Hrotswitha Writes Herself: Clamor Validus Gandeshemensis,” in Sex and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Texts: The Latin Tradition, ed. Barbara K. Gold, Paul Allen Miller, and Charles Platter (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 41-71. Many authors cite weakness as being inverted as strength as a main feature of the plays, while others see a masculinization in overcoming the feminine 2 fully what they consider to comprise femininity, sometimes merely referring to “feminine weakness” as the defining trait of the female sex. Needless to say, such an assertion amounts to a reductive treatment of how Hrotsvit and her medieval audience appear to have viewed gender. Such discourse with its attendant problematic terminology exists alongside theories of female chastity in the Middle Ages as a whole, describing both a militant/masculine type of female spirituality in the early Middle Ages and a bridal/feminine type in the late Middle Ages;4 some scholars even work with models that depict virgins as a third gender.5 However, the work on medieval virginity, when it intersects with literary studies, tends to focus on the Katherine group or other late medieval English sources.6 Such a limited scope of study does not fully take into account earlier continental sources such as Hrotsvit, whose work challenges these common paradigms and categories. My study of Hrotsvit’s gendering of the female characters in her virgin martyr plays Sapientia and Dulcitius, especially during their trials and martyrdoms, contributes to the current scholarship on medieval female spirituality by focusing on chastity and virginity and by analyzing the Latin diction and images used to describe the heroines. Hrotsvit’s women do not readily fit into the militant/bridal, masculine/feminine dichotomies as noted above. Rather, their form of spirituality encompasses both bodily and spiritual femininity as well as autonomous agency and spiritual strength. weakness; for example, see A. Daniel Frankforter, “Hroswitha of Gandersheim and the Destiny of Women,” The Historian 41, no. 2 (1979): 295-314. 4 Ruth Evans, “Virginities,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, ed. Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 21-39 (24). 5 Sarah Salih, Versions of Virginity in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001), 2. 6 Such as Salih, Versions of Virginity, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Saints’ Lives and Women’s Literary Culture c. 1150-1300: Virginity and its Authorizations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 3 Historical Context According to some scholars Hrotsvit, a Saxon nun in the abbey at Gandersheim, was probably born around 935 and died around 1001 or 1002.7 Other scholars have estimated her death to have occurred at the end of the tenth century after her last work was written in the 970s.8 At the time the Holy Roman Empire was flourishing under the Ottonians, Hrotsvit was at her most active,9 indeed, she was considered to be part of the “poetic and cultural foundation… in the Renaissance of Charlemagne and the Ottos.”10 While there is some debate over whether the abbey in Gandersheim was a Benedictine monastery or a community of canonesses—earlier scholarship refers to Hrotsvit as a canoness,11 later to the abbey as Benedictine—the issue remains unresolved.12 It is unclear, therefore, what measure of freedom Hrotsvit herself would have had living at Gandersheim as either a vowed religious under the Benedictine rule or a canoness. Established a century prior in 85213 and founded by Duke Liudolf under the Carolingian king, Louis the German, the abbey maintained connections to Liudolf’s patrilineage, the Ottonian line that would rule the Holy Roman Empire.14 Gerberga, the abbess during Hrotsvit’s time, was the daughter of Henry, the Duke of Bavaria, and thereby Otto I’s
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