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Hrotsvit's Sapientia: Rhetorical power and women of wisdom
Renascence, Winter 2003 by Richmond, Colleen D
Hadrian thinks he has killed wisdom, faith, hope and charity, but they live on in Hrotsvit's play Sapientia. Hrotsvit proves her wisdom and skill as a wordsmith by interweaving ideas of Boethian number theory throughout her tightly constructed play. At the end of the brief mathematics lecture to Hadrian, Sapientia says, "Praise be thereof to the supreme wisdom of the Creator / and to the marvelous science of this world's Maker, / who not only created the world in the beginning out of nothing and ordered everything according to number, measure and weight, / but also in the seasons and in the ages of men gave us the ability to grasp the wondrous science of the arts" (132). In Sapientia, playwright Hrotsvit dramatically proves that she is indeed able "to grasp the wondrous science of the arts." In addition, her female characters have intellectual, verbal, and physical control in their lives. Hrotsvit explains in her "Preface to the Dramas" that God is glorified when He empowers women such as herself and Sapientia and her daughters: "The more seductive the unlawful flatteries of those who have lost their sense, / the greater the heavenly Helper's munificence / and the more glorious the victories of triumphant innocence are shown to be, especially when female weakness triumphs in conclusion / and male strength succumbs in confusion" (3). Further, because the playwright chose to allegorize her characters, the "victories of triumphant innocence" refer also to the unquenchable Christian virtues they vivify: wisdom, faith, hope, and charity. Although Sapientia and her daughters are martyred, these virtues live on in the Roman matrons who received their Christian message at the beginning of the play and keep it alive at the end. Thus, this tenth century play shows a powerful woman writer, inspired female characters, and an unstoppable Christian message. Even one thousand years after writing Sapientia, Hrotsvit challenges readers to live with the strength and conviction of the characters in her play. Likewise, Christian writers of the twenty-first century can find inspiration in the careful craft of this canoness from Saxony.
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Notes
1) Hrotsvit's title for the play is The Martyrdom of the Holy Virgins Fides, Spes, and Karitas, but I will adopt the commonly used Sapientia for the sake of brevity.
2) The martyrdom of three daughters of Sapientia is briefly mentioned in Acta Sanctorum, August 1, but none of the details Hrotsvit describes are included there, nor are there many historical details given.
3) Hrotsvit 129, 132. All quotations from Sapientia are taken from Katherina Wilson's edition. Because the play has no act, scene, or line numbers, page numbers from Wilson's edition are included in the text.
4) Schroeder declares that in Sapientia "All the women are good, Christian, seemingly weak but really strong, seemingly defeated but really victorious, anti-institutional; all the men are the reverse" 55.
5) Masi 12. Masi then provides brief introductions on how Boethian number theory impacted each of these fields of study.
