HERMANN OF REICHENAU (HERIMANNUS AUGIENSIS)

This article appears in Volume V13, Page 366 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: HEG-HIG

HERMANN OF REICHENAU (HERIMANNUS AUGIENSIS) , commonly distinguished as Hermannus Contractus, i.e. the Lame (1013-1054), German scholar and chronicler, was the son of Count Wolferad of Alshausen in Swabia. Hermann, who became a monk of the famous abbey of Reichenau, is at once one of the most attractive and one of the most pathetic figures of medieval

monasticism

MONASTICISM (Gr. p.ovacrnabs, living alone, µ6vos)

. Crippled and distorted by gout from his childhood, he was deprived of the use of his legs; but, in spite of this, he became one of the most learned men of his time, and exercised a

great

GREAT

personal and intellectual influence on the numerous band of scholars he gathered round him. He died on the 24th of September 1054, at the family castle of Alshausen near Biberach. Besides the

ordinary

ORDINARY (med. Lat. ordinarius, Fr. ordinaire)

studies of the monastic scholar, he devoted himself to mathematics, astronomy and music, and constructed watches and

instruments

INSTRUMENTS

of various kinds.
His

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

work

WORK

is a Chronicon ad annum 1054, which furnishes important and

original

ORIGINAL

material for the history of the emperor Henry III. The first edition, from a MS. no longer extant, was printed by J. Sichard at Basel in 1529, and reissued by Heinrich Peter in 1549; another edition appeared at St Blaise in 1790 under the supervision of Ussermann; and a third, as a result of the collation of numerous MSS., forms part of vol. v. of Pertz's Monumenta Germaniae historica. A German translation of the last is contributed by K. F. A. Nobbe to Die Geschichtsschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit (1st ed., Berlin, 1851; 2nd ed.,

Leipzig

LEIPZIG

, 1893). The separate lives of

Conrad

II. and Henry III., often ascribed to Hermann. appear to have perished. His treatises De mensura astrolabii and De utilitatibus astrolabii (to be found, on the authority of Salzburg MSS., in Pez, Thesaurus
enecdotorum novissimus, iii.) being the first contributions of moment
furnisbed by a European to this subject, Hermann was for a time
considered the inventor of the astrolabe. A didactic poem from his
pen, De octo vitiis principalibus, is printed in Haupt's Zeitschrift
fur deutsches Alterthum (vol. xiii.); and he is sometimes credited
Regina, and Alma Redemptoris. A martyrologium by ermann was discovered by E. Dummler in a MS. at

Stuttgart

STUTTGART

, and was published by him in " Das Martyrologium Notkers and seine Verwandten " in Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte, xxv. (Gottingen, 1885).
See H. Hansjakob, Herimann der Lahme (Mainz, 1875) ; Potthast, Bibliotheca med. aev. s. Herimannus Augiensis."

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