Also known as Hermann Contractus or Herman the Cripple (1013 –1054), this brilliant 11th-century scholar, composer, music theorist, mathematician, and astronomer was born July 18, 1013, with a cleft palate, cerebral palsy and either amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or spinal muscular atrophy. Today, he would undoubtedly have been at high risk of abortion. Fortunately, for the world, the Church, and the scientific community, he was conceived and born in a much more enlightened era.
Hermann was the son of Count Wolverad II von Altshausen-Veringen and his wife Hiltrud. They were a noble family from Upper Swabia, a district north of the Bodensee (also known as Lake Constance). The lake’s western arm, west of the city of Konstanz, contained the island of Reichenau. This island, about 5 km long and 1.5 km wide, was the artistic and literary centre of south-west Germany centered on the famous Benedictine monastery which had been founded there in 724. This monastery, along with several other Benedictine monasteries, played an important role in scholarship since it was a centre where manuscripts were copied.
Being a cripple from birth (hence the surname Contractus), Hermann was unable to move without assistance. It was only by the greatest effort that he was able to read and write; but he was so highly gifted intellectually, that on on 13 September 1020, at the age of seven, his parents entrusted him to the learned Abbot Berno, on the island of Reichenau. Here, in 1043 AD, at the age of 30, he took the monastic vows. He would eventually become Abbot of the Monastery after the death of Abbot Berno on 7 June 1048.
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 (then considered a branch of mathematics), several works on geometry and arithmetics, and astronomical treatises, including instructions for the construction of an astrolabe according to the design of Pope Sylvester II. His astrolabe description contain star charts (with data correct for the latitude of Reichenau) and a calculation of the earth’s diameter. Using Roman numerals, he calculated the exact length of a lunar month, and used this to create a new lunar calendar. The three most important instruments he popularized were the astrolabe, a portable sundial and a quadrant with a cursor.
As a historian, he wrote a detailed chronicle from the birth of Christ to his own present day. One of his disciples Berthold of Reichenau continued it. It is the earliest of the medieval universal chronicles now extant, and was compiled from numerous sources, being a monument to his great industry as well as to his extraordinary erudition and strict regard for accuracy. Students flocked to him from all parts, attracted not only by the fame of his scholarship, but also by his monastic virtue and his lovable personality. When he went blind in later life, he wrote hymns, including the Alma Redemptoris Mater, Veni Sancte Spiritus, and Salve Regina (Hail Holy Queen). He was beatified (cultus confirmed) in 1863. Three of five symphonies written by Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya are based on his texts.
Despite his disabilities, being confined to a chair and hardly able to speak, he was a key figure in the transmission of Arabic mathematics, astronomy and scientific instruments from Arabic sources into central Europe. In other words he published in Latin much scientific work which before this time had been only available in Arabic. Where did he learn of these things? Almost certainly from Gerbert, aka Pope Sylvester II, who knew Arabic and whose books undoubtedly came to the Reichenau monastery for copying.
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