HROSWITHA.

Opera ... nuper a Conrado Celte inuenta.

      Nuremberg, Printer for the Sodalitas Celtica [? F. Peypus], 1501. 1501 Sm. folio, roman letter, 82 leaves; with 8 full-page woodcuts, including two by Albrecht Dürer (see below); printer’s device at end, capital spaces with guide letters, a small worm trail in the upper margin of last leaf; a fine, very tall copy (300 x 214 mm.) in dark brown morocco, gilt edges. First edition of the “comedies” and other writings of Hroswitha of Gandersheim. With two full-page woodcut illustrations by Albrecht Dürer (Meder, pp. 279-280; Panofsky, nos. 417 and 418; Dodgson I, 261-63) and five other woodcuts which may be after Dürer, but have also been attributed to Wolf Traut (Dodgson I, 504) and to Dürer’s friend and collaborator Hans von Kulmbach (F. Winkler, H. von Kulmbach, 1959, pp. 33-37, with two reproductions).Hroswitha was a Benedictine nun of Gandersheim in Lower Saxony, born at some time between A.D. 912 and 940. She wrote several poems or metrical Lives of the Saints, but her fame rests principally upon her six religious “comedies” nominally modelled on Terence. These “comedies” occupy an important position in the general history of drama, forming “the visible bridge between the few earlier attempts at utilising the forms of the classical drama for Christian purposes and the miracle plays” (A.W. Ward). They enjoy the added distinction of being the first collection of modern, i.e. non-classical dramas to appear in print. The manuscript (now preserved at Munich) was discovered and edited for this first edition by the great German humanist Conrad Celtes, founder of the literary “sodality” named after him.Five of the woodcuts (one repeated) illustrate the six “comedies”. The other two - both by Dürer himself - represent Celtes presenting his book to the Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, three fellow-members of the Sodalitas Celtica in attendance; and Hroswitha presenting a book to the Emperor Otto I in the presence of his niece, Gerberga, Abbess of Gandersheim.“Hroswitha’s connection to the Ottos stems from the fact that her convent was an imperial foundation. The abbess in Hroswitha’s day was a niece of the ruling emperor, with the status of an imperial prince and even the right to mint her own coinage. The wealth and privileges of Gandersheim made it a magnet for aristocratic women entering monastic life. In their case, the Benedictine Rule was relaxed, since they were not required to take the vow of poverty. The strength of the education of the Gandersheim nuns is reflected in Hroswitha, the best Latin writer in Europe in her day. She produced poetry and histories of her convent revealing a thorough mastery of the classical Latin authors in the school tradition. Her best known works, and deservedly so, are her six plays. Aside from being the first expression of non-liturgical drama since late antiquity, Hroswitha’s plays show her ability to draw independently on literary sources not in the school curriculum and to use them her own way, developing a distinctive literary style and outlook. She has two sets of models. One is the collection of saints’ lives celebrating the early Christian martyrs, the desert ascetics, and the sinners they had converted to a life of repentance and austerity. The second is the Roman comedian Terence (195/85-159 BC) ... He is a surprising source for a nun whose protagonists are Christian martyrs, Magdalenes, and virgins. Hroswitha chose Terence because he taught her how to write humorous dialogue and how to manage the flow of events from scene to scene. She ignores or allegorises the racy passages. As for her hagiographical sources, they typically exalt the male saint who counsels virgins and martyrs or who converts harlots. In Hroswitha’s hands, the female characters become the protagonists and the role of their male mentors is downplayed or ignored. The result is a series of plays that are genuinely comic, that play very well on stage, and that have happy endings spiritually. They are entertaining and edifying at the same time. Hroswitha’s use of her sources as a springboard for her own innovations, in style and substance, is as noteworthy as the high literary finish of her plays” - Marcia L. Colish, Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition 400-1400 (Yale University Press, 1997).This is a duplicate from the Georgia Augusta, the university at Göttingen founded by the Elector Georg August (who was also King George II of Great Britain) in 1734; with the eighteenth-century library and duplum stamps on verso of first leaf, “Ex Bibliotheca Regia Acad: Georgiae Aug” and “Dupl. Bibl. Gott. Vend”. Later label of Baron Horace de Landau, sale Sotheby’s, 12 July 1948, lot 66.