Walafrid Strabo

Walahfrid of Reichenau (also Walahfried ), called Strabo (Latin Cross-Eyes ) or Strabus (* 808/809; † August 18 849 ) was a Benedictine, poet, botanist, diplomat and 838-849 abbot of the monastery of Reichenau.

Life

Walahfrid was of low, Alemannic origin and was born on Lake Constance. As a child he was given by his parents as a wafer to the monastery of Reichenau. After he had 823/24 professed stored, he went to study 825 the monastery of Fulda, where he was taught by Rabanus Maurus. There he Gottschalk met the Saxons, with whom he remained a lifelong friendship that was reflected in numerous poems, connected. In the years 829-838 he was at the court of the Emperor Louis the Pious at Aachen, where he was chaplain of the Empress Judith and educator Charles the Bald. Not only in Fulda, but also in Aachen tormented him great homesick feelings for the island of Reichenau, he brought in his most personal poem, the meter Saphicum expressed.

Emperor Louis the Pious appointed Walahfrid 838 to the abbot of the monastery of Reichenau, in order to reward him for his loyal service at the court. However, this contradicted the law of the Convention on free Abtswahl.

When it came between his sons after the death of Louis the Pious to the dispute over the division of empire to Walahfrid Strabo struck on the side of Lothar I, and was therefore forced to leave the monastery of Reichenau again, since this was in the sphere of Louis the German. He was almost two years in exile in Speyer before he could return to the 842 again Reichenau and resume his duties as abbot, which had been exercised during his absence from Ruadhelm.

At the age of 40 years Walahfrid drowned on August 18, 849 in the Loire. So the island Reichenau lost much of its importance as one of the important centers of Western religion.

Works

Walahfrid among the most important poets of the Carolingian Renaissance.

824 he wrote the Visio Wettini which reproduces the initially retained by the abbot resigned Heito in prose death vision of his teacher Wetti in Latin hexameters. Walahfrids work is the earliest poetic realization of a medieval afterlife; he was thus initiated the revival of a genre that was to reach its unsurpassable culmination in the Divina Commedia of Dante. In the Visio is portrayed as Wetti under the guidance of an angel travels through the underworld and there observed the punishment of various sinners, among them Charlemagne. In the introduction Walahfrid provides an overview of the history of the island of Reichenau and short biographies Heitos and the " ruling " Abbot Erlebald.

To 840 he wrote the Liber de cultura hortorum ( " The book about garden care " ), also known as Hortulus, one of the most important botanical works of the Middle Ages. In verse 24 medicinal plants are listed in this work.

Another important work is De imagine Tetrici, a critique of Charlemagne led transfer of the statue of the Ostrogoth Theodoric the Great from Ravenna to Aachen.

The Codex Sangallensis 878 contains the so-called Vademecum of Wahlafrid, a personal guide, in which he, among other things since his youth entries has made on grammar and metrics to notable events, to medicine and agriculture. It also represents one of the little-known manuscripts of an important personality from the early Middle Ages

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