Walahfrid Strabo | Biography

Walahfrid Strabo--the second part of his name means "the squinter"--was born in Swabia in poor circumstances and educated at the monastery of the Reichenau on Lake Constance, which he remembered fondly in verses in the Sapphic meter that have the repeated refrain "insula felix" (blessed island). He studied under Hrabanus Maurus in Fulda, where he complained of feeling cold and homesick. His fellow students at the famous school included Otfried von Weißenburg; Lupus of Ferrières, who shared his interests in classical writing; and Gottschalk of Orbais, who would become involved in a bitter theological controversy with Hrabanus. In 829 Walahfrid went to the Carolingian court to serve as tutor to the future King Charles the Bald, son of the emperor Louis the Pious and his wife, Judith (to whom Walahfrid dedicated some verses). In 838 he returned to the Reichenau as abbot. On the death of Louis in 840 he supported the eldest son, Lothar, for the succession; after the defeat of Lothar by his brothers, Charles the Bald and Louis the German, at Fontenoy in 841 he endured a period of exile in Speier, from which he wrote a poem to Lothar expressing his hopes in him. He was restored to his abbacy not by Lothar, however, but by Louis the German in 842. He died in France on a visit to his former pupil, Charles, on 18 August 849. His old teacher, Hrabanus, wrote his epitaph, praising his skill as a poet.

Walahfrid's literary and editorial output in his short life was extensive. The work that occupies most of the two volumes of his works in the Patrologia Latina, however--the Glossa Ordinaria, a commentary on the Bible compiled from the writings of earlier theologians-is actually much later. Walahfrid did, however, excerpt from the commentaries of earlier exegetes, including his teacher, Hrabanus.

"German literature" in the ninth century is a difficult concept; only in the most rigid of definitions can it be restricted to literary writings in the vernacular--of which there were few, in any case. Walahfrid does not seem to have composed in German but in the universally acceptable vehicle of Latin. His Latin style is polished; his varied verse forms are, for the most part, classical, and they echo writers such as Virgil. He also undertook editorial tasks, revising, introducing, and polishing texts and putting in headings and divisions.

Walahfrid's earliest work is an apocalyptic vision of Paradise and Purgatory experienced by one of his teachers at the Reichenau, Wetti, just before his death in 824. Wetti's vision was written down in prose, and the eighteen-year-old Walahfrid was encouraged to write a poetic version. He dedicated his Visio Wettini (Vision of Wetti, 829) to another teacher, his lifelong friend and patron, Grimald, an aristocrat and politician who would later become abbot of Saint Gall. This work is of some importance as the first vision-poem and has been referred to as a forerunner of Dante's Divine Comedy (1321). Wetti's vision includes Charlemagne in Hell, having his genitals devoured by beasts as a punishment for lust. Walahfrid's implicit disapproval of Charlemagne in this poem would turn later, in his prologue to Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni Imperatoris (Life of Charlemagne, 830), into references to him as "excellentissimus ... rex" (a most glorious ... emperor); Peter Godman says that this "volte-face" is "no less remarkable for the brazenness with which it was accomplished."

Not long after composing the vision-poem Walahfrid wrote a metrical life of the obscure fourth-century patron saint of Langres, Mammas (the spelling of his name varies) of Cappadocia, and another hagiographic poem on a contemporary figure, the Irishman Saint Blaithmac, who was killed in a Viking raid on Iona in Scotland around 825. Later in life Walahfrid was requested to revise or provide new versions of two further saints' lives in prose: that of Saint Othmar, written originally by Gozbert of Saint Gall (only Walahfrid's version is extant); and that of Saint Gall himself. Two versions of the life of Saint Gall had been written previously; one was anonymous, the other by Wetti. Walahfrid provided a radical revision, with occasional political comments added, in which the saint's miracles underscore the independence of the monastery of Saint Gall from the See of Constance. An anonymous metrical version of the life of Saint Gall closely based on Walahfrid's was written in 850, the year after he died; and Ratpert's German Lobgesang auf den Heiligen Gallus (Panegyric to Saint Gall), which is known only in a Latin translation by Ekkehard IV, was influenced by Wetti's version and possibly by Walahfrid's.

Walahfrid's editorial skill is represented by his introductions to two major biographies of Carolingian emperors: Einhard's life of Charlemagne and Thegan's of Louis the Pious (circa 837-838). While still a young man Walahfrid had written poems to Thegan, an aristocratic churchman who was probably from Trier; and he praises Thegan in the prologue, though he is unhappy about Thegan's criticism of nonaristocratic churchmen such as Walahfrid himself.

Walahfrid's theological works include Libellus de exordiis et incrementis quarundam in rebus ecclesiasticis rerum (A Little Book on the Beginnings and Developments of Some Church Practices, 841). A significant feature of this brief text is the philological interest it shows in borrowings among Greek, Latin, and German in ecclesiastical terminology.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century a set of Old High German glosses was published with the description "Hrabani Mauri, abbatus Fuldensis, glossae latino-barbaricae de partibus humani corporis ... Walafridus Strabus ... discipulus" (Hrabanus Maurus, Abbot of Fulda, Latin-German glosses on parts of the body ... Walahfrid Strabo ... his pupil). Since the text glossed is one of the parts of Isidore of Seville's encyclopedia, the Etymologies, which Hrabanus took over into his De naturis rerum (On the Nature of Things), it is possible that these glosses consist of notes made by Walahfrid during his time at Fulda. Hrabanus's lectures at Fulda, "ego ... Strabus ... trevitate re penitus nemonia laberetur notavi" (which I ... Strabo ... have noted down from memory), also lie behind some Old Testament exegesis with glosses in Codex Sangall. 283. But the speculation that scribe gamma of the Old High German Tatian (circa 830) was Walahfrid--a judgment made on grounds of dialect--is unproven.

In 801 Charlemagne had brought to Aachen a bronze statue of the Gothic king Theoderic, who appears in German literature as Dietrich. The Goths were Arians, adhering to the belief that the Son of God was not eternal by nature, in contradistinction to the Catholic Franks. Moreover, Theoderic had persecuted and killed the philosopher Boethius. In Walahfrid's poem De imagine Tetrici (On the Image of Dietrich, circa 829) the poet and his muse Scintilla criticize Theoderic, contrasting him to Louis the Pious, who is compared to Moses. Walahfrid praises Judith, Louis's children, and other members of the court. The poem is, indeed, courtly poetry, not unlike that written a generation earlier at Charlemagne's court, where biblical and classical comparisons were also made.

Far longer is the poem known later by the title Hortulus (Little Garden) but actually called Liber de cultura hortorum (Book on Gardening). The work, probably a fairly early one, is dedicated to Grimald; the idea for it may have come from De re rustica (Country Matters), a treatise on agriculture by the first-century writer Lucius Junius Columella, the tenth book of which is a poem about gardening. There were copies of the work in Fulda and in the Reichenau. Twenty-three sections examine various plants with reference to their mythological, medicinal, and, sometimes, Christian implications. The dedicatory poem to Grimald is striking, picturing him in his small garden, shaded by apple trees, while the "ludentes pueri" (happy lads) of Grimald's school pick peaches and apples for him. Walahfrid asks Grimald that he might, while reading, "vitiosa seces, deposco, placentia firmes" (prune errors out, I pray; set firm the parts that please).

Walahfrid was a man of wide learning who corresponded with most of the leading intellectuals of his age. He was also ambitious and moved in the highest circles, most notably at the court of Louis the Pious while tutoring the future King Charles the Bald of the West Franks; his poetry reflects Frankish political events and issues. Forced to retire from his abbacy of the Reichenau because of his support for Lothar, he was able with the help of his old friend Grimald, by then chaplain to Louis the German, to make a successful comeback. In the prologue he supplied to the life of Charlemagne, Walahfrid says that Einhard "mira quadam et divinitus provisa libratione se ipsum Deo protegente custodierit" (had a marvelous knack-almost providential, and with God looking after him-of keeping his balance). The description might apply as well to Walahfrid.