VALAFRIDO (UUALAHFRID, WALAHFRID), STRABONE. – Reichenau (v.), Latin Augia, surnamed Strabo (the squint-eyed) because of his natural myopia, later changed to Strabus, born in Alamannia of humble parentage (cf. his poem Nostalgia, composed at Fulda in 829) in 808–809, died on 18 August 849 while crossing a ford of the Loire. He is one of the most engaging figures of the Carolingian age.
Offered to the monastery of Reichenau at a tender age, he became a monk there under Abbot Haito (806–23). His teacher was the monk Wettin, and he enjoyed the friendship of the librarian Reginbert, of Godescalc of Orbais, and of Grimald. Under Abbot Erlebaldo (823–38), though hindered in his literary pursuits, he already revealed himself as a poet with the Tituli Augienses, composed to celebrate the dedication of the church of Reichenau: verses sent in the name of Tatto to important figures of the day. His finest poetry of this period is the Visio Wettini, which K. Vossler calls a modest prelude to Dante’s Divine Comedy: a tribute to Reichenau and its abbots, described with great acuity. V. had witnessed the death of the exemplary religious Wettin, who had dictated a journey performed in vision through hell, purgatory, and heaven, guided by an angel; Haito had composed a prose text of this, with allusions to living persons; V. turned it into a Latin poem, masterly and wholly original, though one senses the author’s admiration for Virgil; in depicting, for example, the clergy’s judgment on Charlemagne, who is punished in purgatory, it even has some historical value. Another of V.’s poems is more interesting for the history of culture: the Hortulus, a poetic and practical description of the little garden of medicinal plants that was obligatory in Benedictine monasteries; the whole is sincerely felt, suffused with the keen observations of a lover of nature. He also composed at this time a verse supplication to an abbot, perhaps his own, begging for clemency.
From 826–27 to 829 he went to Fulda, then the leading centre of learning in Germany, to become a pupil of Rabanus Maurus (v.). There he devoted himself to theology, and Rabanus directed him to study exegesis according to the commentaries of the Fathers. V. was among those who, under Rabanus’s guidance, translated Tatian’Diatessaron (v.) into Old High German; he also composed a gloss, likewise in Old High German, based on Anglo-Saxon texts, which was later found among the codices of Augia.
In 829 Ilduin (v.), chief chaplain of Louis the Pious, summoned him to the court at Aachen to be chaplain to the Empress Judith, also an Alamannian by birth as daughter of Count Welf, and moreover tutor to the prince Charles (later Charles the Bald). In the early days of this new office, which brought him into contact with the leading men of the time (many poetic letters to them survive), he composed the poem De imagine Tetrici on the statue of Theoderic the Ostrogoth erected by Charlemagne in the royal palace; for him Theoderic is an Arian tyrant and serves as a pretext to celebrate the pious and orthodox Emperor Louis the Pious and his second consort, against whom calumnies and rebellions were stirred up by the sons of his first marriage. Throughout this period V. showed Louis and Judith complete loyalty, which was also loyalty to the idea of Empire.
V. as
Valafrido Strarone – Preface to the metrical Passio of St Mammas. 9th-century codex containing the Carminum Walafridi Strabonis parva sylloge – Vatican Library, cod. Reg. lat. 469, f. 2r.
heir to the Alamannia; but all changed after Louis’s defeat at the hands of his sons in 833. The Emperor had to send Judith into exile at Ortano; her son was sent to the abbey of Prüm in the Eifel, where V. followed him. After the Empress was freed by a nobleman and, after a daring escape, returned to her husband, things changed: V. returned to Aachen with Charles the Bald, who was shortly afterwards declared of age. In recognition of the great services rendered by V.’s pen, Louis wished in 838 to make him abbot of Reichenau, but he was not acceptable to all the monks, some of whom had supported Louis the German, who in 833 for the first time had occupied Alamannia. For this reason Erlebaldo resigned, and an election was held which, it seems, gave the majority to Raudhelm. Yet in January 839 Saxony and Alamannia defected from Louis the German; the Emperor recovered Alamannia without a blow and, while preparing war against his rebellious son, visited the province with Judith. The monks then had to come to terms, and V. abbot. Matters changed again after the death of Louis the Pious (840): Alamannia speedily submitted to Louis the German. V. went into exile at Speyer, where he wrote a poem in honour of Emperor Lothar, as well as his most celebrated theological work, the Liber de exordiis et incrementis quorundam in observationibus ecclesiasticis rerum, a liturgical and archaeological manual in which he sets out the origin of divine worship and of altars, of sacred images (advocating the well-known moderate Carolingian theory), of the rite of baptism, and of the use of the vernacular; he recommends the daily celebration of Mass, compares earthly and sacred dignities. Throughout the treatise he does not speak of transubstantiation, defended by Paschasius Radbertus, and indeed uses an unfortunate expression, but this does not mean that he denied it, as some Protestant encyclopedias following E. Reuss have claimed; in fact V. does not engage in dogmatic disquisitions, and must be interpreted according to the teaching of Rabanus Maurus, who, though with Ratramnus (v.) and others he opposed Paschasius Radbertus, also clearly taught transubstantiation.
In 841 the battle of Fontenay decided against the unity of the Empire and against Lothar. Then Grimald succeeded in reconciling Louis the German and V. (842); Raudhelm, who had intruded once more, had to give way, and from 842 to 849 V. carried on a most fruitful activity as father of his monks, raising Reichenau to a centre of study with international attraction and connections. He enjoyed such trust from Louis the German that in 849 the latter assigned him to the court of Charles the Bald to prevent the continual wars between Charles and Lothar; but V. died by drowning. He was commemorated in an epitaph by Rabanus.
A book of V.’s with formularies for letters throws full light on the work of this learned abbot, who knew the life of high society as a perfect courtier; it is valuable not only for cultural history but also for the rare historical and biographical information it contains. Another collection of V.’s writings has been described very recently by B. Bischoff. He can no longer be regarded as a great secret, since the Glossa Ordinaria contains very few materials from V. Perhaps V. is more important for his commentaries in Old High German than for those in Latin, but neither have yet been adequately studied. V. shines chiefly as one of the finest Latin poets of the Carolingian Renaissance.