
An artistic rendering of "Herman the Lame" as he is sometimes called
Hermann of Reichenau (also called
Hermannus Contractus or
Hermannus Augiensis) (
1013 July 18 –
1054 September 24) was an 11th century scholar, composer,
music theorist, mathematician, and astronomer. Hermannus was a son of the duke of
Altshausen. He was crippled by a paralytic disease from early childhood. He spent most of his life in the abbey of
Reichenau, an island on
Lake Constance. Hermannus 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
arithmetics and
astronomical treatises (including instructions for the construction of an
astrolabe, at the time a very novel device in Christian Europe). As a historian, he wrote a detailed
chronicle 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 was its continuator.
He was
beatified (cultus confirmed) in 1863.