Rara avis in Saxonia

 The "rare bird" is Hrotswit of Gandersheim, a 10th-century nun who must have been one of the most talented Latin writers of her time -- the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Ottto I.  I admit I have read only excerpts of her works, which include poetry, history and, remarkably, plays inspired by the  classical writer Terence. Nevertheless, I find her an exciting figure.
I'm thinking about her because I just read a review of The Works of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim on The Medieval Review.  The  Works, edited and translated by Robert Gary Babcock, is reviewed by Phyllis Rugg Brown, who   succeeds in convincing  the reader (me!) that this is an excellent book about one of those women who used the structures of female monasticism to overcome the restrictions that most women had to put up with.  
Evidently Professor Babcock has done a first-rate job of characterizing Hrotsvit and her achievements as a religious writer. His reviewer,  Professor Brown, has produced an excellent review typical of the Medieval Review, which has grown into a vital resource.  Hat's off! 

The image  comes from the first printedd edition of Hrotsvit's  works from 1501.  My guess is that it shows Hrotswit presenting her works to Emperor Otto I.

 

Speaking of early history...

...I have recently been introduced to Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog: The outlandish, the anomalous and the curious from the last five thousand years.

It looks like it will be fun. If you're curious look at the latest post, World’s last Latin speakers in Africa?

Here is an excerpt:

Beachcombing guesses that the latest Latin speakers were those on the outskirts of the collapsing Empire, where there was the need to keep Latin ‘proper’, while these often bilingual invariably barbarian communities grasped onto their fading Roman identity as the world went soggy around them. As such the bilingual inscriptions of sixth- and seventh-century Wales (Irish-Latin) are interesting because the Latin there seems to show characteristics of a spoken language. And this at a date when the Romance languages were becoming increasingly unlatin-like.

For Beachcombing though an even more exciting reference appears in the work of Muhammad Al Idrisi in the mid twelfth century. Al Idrisi, an Andalusan Arab writer, wrote in A Diversion for the Man Longing to Travel to Far-Off Places – a work best known for carrying the earliest reference to Italian pasta – that the inhabitants of Gafsa in what is today Tunisia ‘are Berberised and the majority speak African Latin’. Could these have been the last Latin speakers in the world? It is a nice story, but Al Idrisi then gives the name of the town spring as tarmīd (a word still used today) that does not sound particularly Ciceronian…