As part of Brill's ongoing Companions to the Christian Tradition, this collection gathers together the essays of ten senior scholars in an effort to both guide its audience through Hrotsvit's collected works as well as to situate the famous clamor vocis of Gandersheim within her literary and historical context. The volume is divided into three parts. The first introduces the reader to Hrotsvit's tenth-century world, orients the reader to her collected works through an edited translation of Walter Berschin's introduction to his 2001 edition (Hrotsvit: opera omnia) and situates Hrotsvit's theology of virginity in a wider context of tenth-century ‘proto-reformers’. The articles in the second part of the book outline the main historical and historiographical issues particular to each genre in which Hrotsvit wrote, while also teasing out the originality and underlying purpose(s) of her compositions. The collection concludes, in the third part, with more concentrated discussions of a series of pervasive issues prevalent in Hrotsvit's work, including gendered perspectives of sexuality and dialogue, the composition of Hrotsvit's audiences and how generations since Conrad Celtis's ‘discovery’ and publication of Hrotsvit's works in 1501 have incorporated and entwined this rara avis into modern discussions and debates.

While each of these articles advances the volume's stated goals, several stand out as particularly illuminating. For instance, Zampelli moves the conversation past remarks on Hrotsvit as a female writer by focusing on how she engaged with patristic authors’ condemnation of the theatre by dramatising and sacralising it in her plays. Likewise, Bodarwé's historiographical essay goes beyond mere recollection of the secondary literature from the sixteenth century onwards by tracing Hrotsvit's ‘avatars’ as national icon, feminist symbol and scholarly figure. Through her characterisations, Bodarwe urges scholars to find new avenues forward, especially in regard to Hrotsvit's identity as a nun. Indeed, this volume does leave one wishing for more commentary on the issues raised by Bodarwé, especially in terms of how Hrotsvit's texts were received, not just by the ‘outside’ world of the courts, but also by the nuns. As these authors illuminate Hrotsvit's erudition and repeatedly list her literary influences, one is set to wondering how such a mind fitted into the fabric of Gandersheim and to what extent her most immediate audience could be reflected in her works. Likewise, while this volume certainly extends beyond Gandersheim, the authors tend to dichotomise the women within its walls and the men outside.

Many women, however – particularly Ottonian queens and empresses, but also other royal abbesses and nuns as well as noble laywomen – participated in patronage and literary culture as it intersected with royal convents and monasteries, but are rarely discussed. These comments are certainly not detractions. Instead, they point to the compelling nature of the collected articles and their ability, like a good companion, to lead the way into further avenues of inquiry.