A New Prologue of Walafrid Strabo

Abstract

In this article, evidence is put forward for a new editorial prologue by the ninth-century scholar and poet Walafrid Strabo. Long thought to be a short preface composed and printed by the sixteenth-century French jurist Pierre Pithou, the text’s appearance in a manuscript from 1508 (Wroclaw, Biblioteka Uniwersytecka Akc. 1949/397) demonstrates an earlier origin. Through a close examination of this manuscript’s contents, together with independent evidence provided by marginalia from Pithou himself, the text is shown to have come from Walafrid’s pen. Written as a didactic prologue to the Episcoporum de poenitentia ... relatio Compendiensis, the two texts were conjoined with Thegan’s Gesta Hludowici in 841–842 both to expose the fraudulence of the rebellion against Emperor Louis the Pious in 833, and to underscore the cruel cunning of Archbishop Ebbo of Reims. This small compilation by Walafrid was incorporated soon thereafter by the famous librarian of Reichenau, Reginbert, within a larger compilation of hi...