OTFRID OF WEISSENBURG. - Benedictine monk, b. in Alsace around 790, d. 870. A disciple of Rabanus Maurus, then head of the monastic school of Weissenburg, author of an Evangelical Harmony in the Frankish language of the upper Rhine, which he entitled Liber evangeliorum D. g. theodisce conscriptus, also known by the name Krist, given to it by E. G. Graff.

The work consists of five books, corresponding to the five senses which in man are the channel of sin, and it draws on the source of the Gospels, with the usual adaptations to the local environment and customs, and with frequent moral reflections and considerations. The historical importance of the work, which reveals the theologian and the scholar more than the poet, lies in its form, since O. was the creator of a verse that remained for two or three centuries the dominant type in German poetics: it consists of two hemistichs, each with four arses and an indefinite number of theses, linked to one another by means of rhyme, which here for the first time replaces the characteristic Germanic alliteration. O. of the languages is, after the remote Visigothic Ulfilas, the first German writer whose name is known.

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: Manitius, I, pp. 574-77; J. Körner, Bibliographisches Handbuch des deutschen Schrifttums, Berns 1949, p. 87.

Bruno Vignola

@incollection{ec9_otfrido_di_weissenburg, author = {Vignola, Bruno}, title = {Otfrido di Weissenburg}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {IX}, pages = {445}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/otfrido-di-weissenburg} }

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Otfrid of Weissenburg

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