Hermann of Reichenau (nonfiction)

A medieval artistic rendering of "Herman the Lame" as he is sometimes called.

Hermann of Reichenau (July 18, 1013 – September 24, 1054), also called Hermannus Contractus or Hermannus Augiensis or Herman the Cripple, was an 11th-century scholar, composer, music theorist, mathematician, and astronomer. He composed the Marian prayer Alma Redemptoris Mater. He was beatified (cultus confirmed) in 1863.

Childhood

Hermann was a son of the Count of Altshausen. He was crippled by a paralytic disease from early childhood. He was born July 18, 1013, with a cleft palate, cerebral palsy, and is said to have had spina bifida. Based on the evidence, however, more recent scholarship indicates Hermann possibly had either amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or spinal muscular atrophy. As a result, he had great difficulty moving and could hardly speak. At seven, he was placed in a Benedictine 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, an island on Lake Constance in Germany. Hermann contributed to all four arts of the quadrivium. 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, several works on geometry and arithmetic, and astronomical treatises (including instructions for the construction of an astrolabe, at the time a very novel device in Western Europe). As a historian, he wrote a detailed chronicle from the birth of Christ to his own present day, ordering them after the reckoning of the Christian era. One of his disciples Berthold of Reichenau continued it.

At twenty, Hermann was professed as a Benedictine monk, spending the rest of his life in a 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. When he went blind in later life, he began writing hymns, the best known of which is Salve Regina (Hail Holy Queen).

Herman died in a monastery on September 24, 1054, aged 40. The Roman Catholic Church beatified him in 1863.

Further reading

• McCarthy, T. J. H. Music, scholasticism and reform: Salian Germany, 1024–1125 (Manchester, 2009), pp. 23–30, 62–71. Template:ISBN.
• The Musica of Hermannus Contractus. Edited and translated by Leonard Ellinwood. Revised with a new introduction by John L. Snyder (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2015), xviii + 221 pp.

External links

• Template:MacTutor Biography
• Catholic Encyclopedia
• Hermannus Contractus German language site with a collection of original texts
• Catholic Forum
• musicologie.org Hermannus Contractus et la théorie de la musique. Sources, éditions, bibliographie, commentaires

Fiction cross-reference

• Crimes against mathematical constants
• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles
• Mathematician
• Mathematics

Nonfiction cross-reference

• List of Roman Catholic scientist-clerics (nonfiction)
• Mathematician (nonfiction)
• Mathematics (nonfiction)

External links:

• Hermann of Reichenau @ Wikipedia