Hermannus Contractus
Encyclopedia
Hermann of Reichenau also called Hermannus Contractus or Hermannus Augiensis or Herman the Cripple, was an 11th century scholar, composer, music theorist
Music theory
Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...

, mathematician, and astronomer. He composed the Marian prayer Alma Redemptoris Mater
Alma Redemptoris Mater
Alma Redemptoris Mater is a Marian hymn and one of four liturgical Marian antiphons , and sung at the end of the office of Compline. Hermannus Contractus is said to have authored the hymn based on the writings of Ss. Fulgentius, Epiphanius, and Irenaeus of Lyon...

. He was beatified (cultus confirmed) in 1863.

Childhood

Hermann was a son of the duke of Altshausen
Altshausen
Altshausen is a small Swabian municipality near Ravensburg, Baden-Württemberg, southern Germany.- Geography :Altshausen is situated in Upper Swabia, about 40 kilometers north of Lake Constance...

. He was crippled by a paralytic disease from early childhood. He was born in 1013 with a cleft palate, cerebral palsy and spina bifida. [None of the sources cited just the specific diagnosis of spina bifida]. As a result he had great difficulty moving and could hardly speak. At the age of seven he was placed in a Benedictine
Benedictine
Benedictine refers to the spirituality and consecrated life in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century for the cenobitic communities he founded in central Italy. The most notable of these is Monte Cassino, the first monastery founded by Benedict...

 monastery by his parents who could no longer look after him. He grew up in the monastery, learning from the monks and developing a keen interest in both theology and the world around him.

Adulthood

He spent most of his life in the abbey of Reichenau
Reichenau Island
Reichenau Island lies in Lake Constance in southern Germany, at approximately . It lies between Gnadensee and Untersee, two parts of Lake Constance, almost due west of the city of Konstanz. The island is connected to the mainland by a causeway that was completed in 1838...

, an island on Lake Constance
Lake Constance
Lake Constance is a lake on the Rhine at the northern foot of the Alps, and consists of three bodies of water: the Obersee , the Untersee , and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, called the Seerhein.The lake is situated in Germany, Switzerland and Austria near the Alps...

. Hermannus contributed to all four arts of the quadrivium
Quadrivium
The quadrivium comprised the four subjects, or arts, taught in medieval universities, after teaching the trivium. The word is Latin, meaning "the four ways" , and its use for the 4 subjects has been attributed to Boethius or Cassiodorus in the 6th century...

. He was renowned as a musical composer (among his surviving works are officia for St. Afra and St. Wolfgang). He also wrote a treatise on the science of music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, several works on geometry
Geometry
Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....

 and arithmetic
Arithmetic
Arithmetic or arithmetics is the oldest and most elementary branch of mathematics, used by almost everyone, for tasks ranging from simple day-to-day counting to advanced science and business calculations. It involves the study of quantity, especially as the result of combining numbers...

s and astronomical
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

 treatises (including instructions for the construction of an astrolabe
Astrolabe
An astrolabe is an elaborate inclinometer, historically used by astronomers, navigators, and astrologers. Its many uses include locating and predicting the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars, determining local time given local latitude and longitude, surveying, triangulation, and to...

, at the time a very novel device in Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...

). As a historian, he wrote a detailed chronicle
Chronicle
Generally a chronicle is a historical account of facts and events ranged in chronological order, as in a time line. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events, the purpose being the recording of events that occurred, seen from the perspective of the...

 from the birth of Christ to his own present day, for the first time compiling the events of the 1st millennium AD scattered in various chronicles in a single work, ordering them after the reckoning of the Christian era. His disciple Berthold of Reichenau
Berthold of Reichenau
Berthold of Reichenau was a Benedictine monk and chronicler of Reichenau Abbey.-Life:He was a disciple and friend of the Hermannus Contractus...

 was its continuator.

At the age of twenty Herman was professed as a Benedictine monk; he spent the rest of his life in the monastery. He was literate in several languages, including Arabic, Greek and Latin and wrote about mathematics, astronomy and Christianity. He built musical and astronomical instruments and was also a famed religious poet. [None of the references justify the claim that he could read Arabic. There were few Arabic speaking scholars in Europe at this time, and Herman could not have learned by traveling scholars]. When he went blind in later life he began writing hymns. His best known is Salve Regina
Salve Regina
The "Salve Regina", also known as the Hail Holy Queen, is a Marian hymn and one of four Marian antiphons sung at different seasons within the Christian liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church. The Salve Regina is traditionally sung at Compline in the time from the Saturday before Trinity...

(Hail Holy Queen).

Herman died at the age of forty in the monastery in 1054. The Church beatified him in 1863.

Legacy and influence

Three of five symphonies that were written by Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya
Galina Ustvolskaya
Galina Ivanovna Ustvolskaya, also Ustwolskaja or Oustvolskaia was a Russian composer of classical music.-Early years:From 1937 to 1947 she studied at the college attached to the Leningrad Conservatory . She subsequently became a postgraduate student and taught composition at the college...

are based on his texts.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK