Walafrid Strabo

(“The Squinter”)

(ca. 809–849)

   Walafrid was a German cleric of the Carolingian period known for his polished and elegant Latin style. He was the author of SAINTS’ LIVES, religious treatises, religious verse, introductions to historical works, and theological commentaries. Walafrid was born in Swabia about 809.He was educated at Reichenau Abbey on Lake Constance. At the age of 17, he moved to Fulda. He wrote of feeling cold and homesick at Fulda, but received an excellent education under Hrabanus Maurus. He wrote his first major work at the age of 18, when he put into verse an apocalyptic vision (the Visio Wettini) of the realms of the afterlife as experienced by Wetti, one of his former teachers at Reichenau. He dedicates the poem to Wetti’s brother Grimwald. In the vision, CHARLEMAGNE is pictured being tormented in hell—an ironic detail since Walafrid later wrote an introduction to EINHARD’s biography of Charlemagne.

   In 829,Walafrid went to the court of the king Louis the Pious, where he was employed as tutor to his son, the future king Charles the Bald. He remained in this position until 838, when he returned to Reichenau with an appointment as abbot. However, when Louis died in 840,Walafrid supported the king’s son Lothar as Louis’s successor. But when Lothar was defeated by his brothers, Louis the German and Charles the Bald,Walafrid was forced to abandon Reichenau and go into exile at Speyer (Spires).

   Through the offices of his former colleague Grimald, now chaplain to Louis the German, Walafrid was pardoned and reinstated as abbot of Reichenau in 842.He died while in France on a visit to his former pupil Charles, on August 18, 849. His teacher Hrabanus wrote his epitaph, praising him for his contributions to the church and to letters. Walafrid’s most influential work was a great compilation of biblical commentary (mostly collected from patristic sources) known as the Glosa ordinaria, a text that remained for more than 500 years the most important collection of exegesis in existence. It was still being printed as late as the 17th century.He also wrote a poetic life of St. Gall and several other saints’ lives. Perhaps his bestknown poem is the Hortulus, also dedicated to his old patron Grimald. It describes a garden Walafrid kept, and discusses the medicinal herbs and other plants that the abbot tended with his own hand.

   Walafrid remains important because of his highly influential Glosa, for the picture he gives us of medieval horticulture, and for his early Visio Wettini, seen by many as a forerunner to DANTE’s DIVINE COMEDY.

   Bibliography

   ■ Godman, Peter. Poets and Emperors: Frankish Politics and Carolingian Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.

   ■ Raby, F. J. E. A History of Christian-Latin Poetry. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953.

   ■ Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini. Edited and translated by David A. Traill. Bern, Switzerland: H. Lang, 1974.