Hermannus Contractus
Hermannus Contractus (also called Hermannus Augiensis, Hermann of Reichenau) (1013-1054) was an 11th century scholar. 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 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, astronomical treatises (including instructions for the construction of an astrolabe, at the time a very novel device in christian Europe) and a detailed chronicle from the birth of Christ to Hermann's present day, for the first time compiling the events of the 1st millennium AD scatterd in various chronicles in a single work, ordering them after the reckoning of the Christian era.
