Such was the ignorance of the ancient stage in the middle ages, that the meaning of the word _comœdia_ was not understood. The Anglo-Saxon glossaries interpret the word by _racu_, a narrative, especially an epic recital, and this was the sense in which it was generally taken until late in the fourteenth or the fifteenth century. It is the sense in which it is used in the title of Dante's great poem, the "Divina Commedia." When the mediæval scholars became acquainted in manuscripts with the comedies of Terence, they considered them only as fine examples of a particular sort of literary composition, as metrical narratives in dialogue, and in this feeling they began to imitate them. One of the first of these mediæval imitators was a lady. There lived in the tenth century a maiden of Saxony, named Hrotsvitha--a rather unfortunate name for one of her sex, for it means simply "a loud noise of voices," or, as she explains it herself, in her Latin, _clamor validus_. Hrotsvitha, as was common enough among the ladies of those days, had received a very learned education, and her Latin is very respectable. About the middle of the tenth century, she became a nun in the very aristocratic Benedictine abbey of Gandesheim, in Saxony, the abbesses of which were all princesses, and which had been founded only a century before. She wrote in Latin verse a short history of that religious house, but she is best known by seven pieces, which are called comedies (_comœdiæ_), and which consist simply of legends of saints, told dialogue-wise, some in verse and some in prose. As may be supposed, there is not much of real comedy in these compositions, although one of them, the Dulcitius, is treated in a style which approaches that of farce. It is the story of the martyrdom of the three virgin saints--Agape, Chione, and Irene--who excite the lust of the persecutor Dulcitius; and it may be remarked, that in this "comedy," and in that of Callimachus and one or two of the others, the lady Hrotsvitha displays a knowledge of love-making and of the language of love, which was hardly to be expected from a holy nun.[79] [79] Several editions of the writings of Hrotsvitha, texts and translations, have been published of late years both in Germany and in France, of which I may point out the following as most useful and complete--"Théatre de Hrotsvitha, Religieuse Allemande du x^e siècle....par Charles Magnin," 8vo., Paris, 1845; "Hrotsvithæ Gandeshemensis, virginis et monialis Germanicæ, gente Saxonica ortæ, Comœdias sex, ad fidem codicis Emmeranensis typis expressas edidit.... J. Benedixen," 16mo., Lubecæ, 1857; "Die Werke der Hrotsvitha: Herausgegeben von Dr. K. A. Barack," 8vo., Nürnberg, 1858.