eld to your pious request, I will grant you, without
recompense, tokens from both these sacred bodies, cut before
your very eyes from off the sacred bodies themselves, if so
be that you will make solemn oath to me to venerate these
relics in your community, of the which you have made
mention, preserving them for all time within your Church,
sacred hymns being there sung by night and by day, and a
light being alway kept burning. And of our apostolic right
we ordain, according to your request, that your community be
of our See, to the end that it may be secured from all
secular rule.

And Liudolf, with glad heart, made promise of this, and returned home
with the coveted relics.

The MS., now at Munich, which tells this fascinating story of love and
faith, was, it is considered, written about A.D. 1000, and was
fortunately preserved in the Benedictine convent of St. Emmeran,
Ratisbon, where the scholar and poet, Conrad Celtes, discovered it at
the end of the fifteenth century. It also includes metrical legends, a
fragment of a panegyric on the Emperor Otho, and six dramas. Of such
worth were these latter counted, that when Celtes published the MS. in
1501, Albert Duerer received a commission for an ornamental title-page,
and for a frontispiece to each of the plays. It is by these dramas
that Roswitha has distinguished herself in the world of letters; for
although the legends contain points of interest, and are treated with
skill, they are naturally not so unique as the dramas, nor do they
reflect her personality in the same way. She herself tells us that the
plays were written in imitation of the manner, but not of the matter,
of Terence, and that her only desire in writing them was "to make the
small talent given her by Heaven to create, under the hammer of
devotion, a faint sound to the praise of God."

But before considering her work, let us glance at her own life, and
the life of contemporary Saxon nunneries.

[Illustration: _Royal Library, Munich._

COVER OF ST. EMMERAN GOSPELS.

Tenth Century.

_To face page 7._]

Nearly one hundred and fifty years before the supposed date of
Roswitha's birth, the hitherto untamed and warlike Saxons had been
finally defeated by the mercenaries of Charlemagne, and, as one of the
signs of submission, forced to embrace Christianity. But having
submitted, they forthwith, and with an aptitude suggestive of the
spirit of the mod