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HROTSVIT OF GANDERSHEIM (c935–c1000) The first female playwright

An illustration shows Hrotsvit presenting one of her works to Otto the Great, who served as Holy Roman Emperor between 962 and 973 LEFT: A page of Hrotsvit’s writings concerning Otto’s wife, Adelaide of Italy

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The 10th-century Saxon canoness Hrotsvit of Gandersheim called herself “the strong voice of Gandersheim”. She had numerous firsts to her credit: first medieval playwright, first female playwright, first female German poet and first female German historian.

Dedicating her works to various family members of Holy Roman Emperor Otto the Great, Hrotsvit was highly educated in both the quadrivium (music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy) and the trivium (grammar, rhetoric and logic), as well as key writings by Christian theologians. Hrotsvit was also well-versed in Roman pagan authors, whose immoral comedies featured love affairs and women of suspect reputation, embodying the worst of misogynist beliefs. Hrotsvit took these well-plotted, but immoral, plays and turned them into admirable dramas featuring worthy women and weak men. Girls stood up to those who did not let them lead the lives they chose.

Hrotsvit put to vellum the first-known dramas since the classical period. Her plays extol females, from strong virgins to prostitute saints, willing to sacrifice themselves for God. What could have been happier for a devout medieval Christian than to end up in heaven? Her heroines include young girls, one as young as eight, who stand up defiantly under torture and humiliation from pagan Roman officials. One holy virgin tells the violent emperor, “I have called him a fool, I now call him a fool, and I shall call him a fool as long as I live.” Nothing frightens her.

Interestingly, Hrotsvit also uses misogynistic stereotypes about women – that they are more physically weak than men, for example – to argue the very opposite. Hrotsvit even has two fallen women as her heroines, who exemplify the category of the ‘holy harlot’, as seen most famously in the life of Saint Mary of Egypt.

MARGARET OF BEVERLEY (c1150–c1214/15) The fighting crusader

Margaret of Beverley found herself caught up in the 1187 siege of Jerusalem, when the holy city came under a fierce attack from the Ayyubid sultan Saladin

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Margaret of Beverley, born in Jerusalem to English pilgrim parents, returned to th

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