In 1950 Bernhard Bischoff identified Walahfrid Strabo (808/809-849), a Reichenau monk and eventually abbot of the place, tutor to the son of Carolingian Emperor Louis the Pious and Empress Judith, and a many-faceted scholar as the principal copyist and presumptive owner of a fascinating book, now preserved as MS Saint Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, 878. Why is this important? So much of what survives from the past is generic and yields only frustratingly general glimpses of historical patterns. But a book that belonged to a specific individual situated in a specific time and space who chose the texts he wanted copied in his book gives us entrée to a mind thinking and making choices about what was important to know and to preserve. One book has the potential, one might say, to speak volumes. Bischoff's argument for linking the Saint Gall manuscript to Walahfrid was compelling, although circumstantial. The Carolingian minuscule script, he thought, was characteristic of Reichenau, rather than of Saint Gall. Bischoff (1906-1991), the twentieth century's preeminent paleographer of Carolingian manuscripts, detected four phases in the development of the principal copyist's handwriting, phases he labelled WI, WII, WIII, and WIV. He judged that WI copied the earliest texts around 825 and WIV the latest in 849, just before Walahfrid's accidental death in August of that year. Nothing in the book speaks directly of Walahfrid, but Bischoff saw in its varied contents texts and interests that matched the monk's to a T. He later found Walahfrid's handwriting in a fragment now kept in Beuron and in a Horace manuscript now at the Vatican's Biblioteca Apostolica. [1]
Wesley M. Stevens began studying the Saint Gall manuscript in 1965, has published on Walahfrid since 1972, and worked on the present book since 1993 (vii-viii). Rhetoric and Reckoning consists of twelve chapters and seven appendices. The first two chapters set the stage with an introduction to the Carolingian renouatio in literature and science, here understood mainly as numeracy, and to the early life of Walahfrid. The third chapter dives into the Sammelhandschrift or, as Stevens called it, the Vademecum, with a paleographical analysis of its scripts. Stevens refined Bischoff's four phases of Walahfrid's script, identifying seven stages in its development stretching along the itinerant monk's travels to and from Reichenau, Fulda, Weissenburg, Ingelheim, Worms, Aachen, Prüm, St-Denis, and Compiègne. He dated and localized the seven phases, analyzing Walahfrid's letter formations, use of ligatures, abbreviations, ink color, etc. He also identified the script of sixteen other individuals who copied material into the book (47-71). The interested reader should follow along by consulting the excellent online digital version (in color) at https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/list/one/csg/0878 (available since December, 2006) as the proverbial image speaks much more clearly than do pages of descriptions of script.
After the chapters on the manuscript and on Walahfrid's script, succeeding chapters move along chronologically following Stevens' reconstruction of Walahfrid's itinerary and life course. Stevens also tied segments of Walahfrid's book to the monk's studies and interests during these intervals, although in Rhetoric and Reckoning the emphasis falls decidedly in favor of reckoning over rhetoric. Rhetoric curiously does not appear among the texts Walahfrid collected nor is it discussed in the book. The book title's rhetoric serves as a catch-all phrase for whatever is not numerical. Following Bischoff, Stevens identified almost all the texts in Walahfrid's book. But Donatus, Priscian, Bede's grammatical works, one of Seneca's letters to Lucilius, and excerpts from Eusebius, Orosius, and the Historia ecclesiastica tripertita receive relatively short shrift if any shrift at all. For example, Seneca's letter to Lucilius (epistola 120, 1-13) about how to know the good and how to live an honorable life according to Stoic teaching is ignored. It's a remarkable letter and well worth contemplating its impact on Walahfrid (did he ever cite it?) and its circulation in a monastic context.
Stevens' primary interest was to redress a perceived imbalance, a general failure by modern historians to appreciate Walahfrid's scientific interests (vii). In the closing "Evaluation," he noted that "Walahfrid has often and rightly been praised as a poet and biblical commentator. ... Equally remarkable is that his Vademecum reveals a concerted interest in the discipline of computus" (173-174). Computus, the medieval study of the calendar, time-reckoning, and astronomy, was familiar to most Carolingian scholars who were as skilled in numerical studies as they were in literary matters. Stevens drilled down into the computistical sections of Walahfrid's book, especially his collection of computistical argumenta, formulas for determining all kinds of calendrical and astronomical data. Chapter 8, "Compilationes Astronomicae et Computisticae," introduces the so-called Three-Book Computus of 809/810 and the Seven-Book Computus of 812-818, Carolingian efforts to reconcile and regularize various computistical systems, especially the formulas, so that everyone could apply the same rules. Walahfrid's formulas can be traced to these treatises, especially to the Seven-Book Computus. Chapters 9, 10, and 11 follow Walahfrid when presumably he was with Charles, his young student, and when he copied the formulas into his book. Stevens identified the sources of Walahfrid's computistical formulas, sources that show Walahfrid in step with the most modern computistical thinking. Stevens spent a great deal of ink (155-166; 285-349) trying to determine which of the six surviving manuscripts of the compilations that date to Walahfrid's time he might have used for his own book. In the end, the hunt concluded that none of those manuscripts were his source (334). Readers will wonder why they were taken so deeply into the weeds on this hunt. The details of the manuscripts may be useful for specialists, but they do not contribute toward knowing Walahfrid and the choices he made. The pursuit of detail seemingly for detail's sake also diverts from asking larger questions.
For example, one wonders about the manuscript itself. As a personal notebook, it strikes me as quite anomalous. Bischoff thought the manuscript "quite plain" and that may be.[2] The parchment certainly is not high quality. There are numerous natural holes in it, corners are often missing, and edges are often ragged, as if Walahfrid had to make do with leftover scraps of skin. And there are ink spills and marginal inscriptions that have been blotted, rubbed, and scraped. On the other hand, I am impressed by the care with which its texts were compiled in what seems to have been a deliberate, orderly fashion. There's none of the spontaneity one might expect of a personal notebook. The script is very carefully rendered by all the participants in the book's confection, especially by Walahfrid whose letters and words are clearly copied, nicely spaced, regularly formed and not at all hurried. All of the titles and many initials are brightly rubricated, often by Walahfrid. Remarkably, the right margin of ms p. 52 displays in dry point an alphabet of rustic capitals from A to K that seems to have served as the model for the book's capitals (compare the B on ms p. 79 and the E on ms p. 140, for example). It is as if the book were intended for an audience larger than one.
The other big question that Rhetoric and Reckoning might have addressed is how all the collecting and copying tied into Walahfrid's own work. What influence did the thinking of Seneca, Jerome, Orosius, Bede, and Alcuin have on Walahfrid's formation and outlook? Instead of addressing these kinds of issues, many pages needlessly rehearse well-known Carolingian political and family history, needlessly because in his book as well as elsewhere "[u]sually, Walahfrid has little or nothing to say about the severe political and military difficulties through which he was living" (135). So, Rhetoric and Reckoning focuses on selective trees rather than on the forest. How well does it do that? Unfortunately, even within this limited scope, Rhetoric and Reckoning is a disappointing and an extraordinarily puzzling book--disappointing because of its disinterest in big questions and puzzling because of the astounding nature of its pervasive errors.
There is no joy in documenting failure. What follows is selective and meant to alert readers and to correct the record as far as the Saint Gall manuscript is concerned. Many transcriptions from Walahfrid's book are faulty. Walahfrid and his partners wrote plainly, so it should not have been a challenge to distinguish et from ex, yet these letters are frequently confused. For experimento (ms p. 335, 3), the transcription put & perimento (102). The nonsensical "Litterae Latini et Grecae ab Ebreis videntur et orate" (86) was made to render "Litterae latinae et grecae ab ebreis uidentur exorte." (ms p. 318) A few lines down, "enim ex simili sono" (ms p. 319, 3) was made to read "enim et similii sono." (86) For porcellum (ms p. 303, 5) the reader will encounter porvellum (36). "Magna mortalitas fuit" is what Walahfrid's book has (ms p. 303, 8), but in Rhetoric and Reckoning we read "Magna mortalitas comedit" (36; comedit appears one line up in the manuscript). Another inattentive reading cites ms p. 301, 20 as pedes XV (36), but the manuscript clearly shows pedes XXXII (pedes XV occurs on line 23). For the manuscript's "et post VI redeant" (ms p. 218, 17), readers will see "et post V redeant" (77, left column). Appendix A transcribed the very interesting "Fulda Calendar" Walahfrid composed when he was with that community. But, here we read for geminorum (ms p.324) terminorum (185) and "adriani cum sociis" (ms p. 325) appears as "adriani cum socius" (193). In the title of one of Walahfrid's texts, EXCERPTUM EX STORIA TRIPERTITA (ms p. 306), the last word inexplicably became TRIPERTI[II]M (44). Another big rubricated title reads in part INTRA XII KAL. APRILIS (ms p. 300), but was doubly misread as INTER XIX KAL. APRILIS (144). The text it introduces begins "Constat igitur" which became "Incipit constant igitur" (144). A few typos are not unusual in complex foreign-language works, but there is something more fundamentally amiss here.
Lack of care with detail, unfortunately, goes hand in hand with a general lack of thoroughness, curiosity, and historical intuition. Readers learn that "At [the] foot of ms p.209 is the numeral XIII, perhaps indicating the previous end of that quire (194-209). No other quire marks survive." (28, note 9) But the quire signature in question is XIIII, not XIII, and many others do indeed survive. [3] Readers will be surprised to learn that the monk kept a list of spices and elements "with their costs at market." (34, note 26; 87) But they should conjure instead a monk taking an inventory (ms p. 334, 1-23 [not 1-16]) of available supplies in his monastery's cupboards rather than a monk going from stall to stall in the town market. The numbers of librae, denarii, unciae, and scripuli are of quantities, not costs. On the very next page (ms p. 335) Walahfrid copied sixteen lines headed by the title, De conflictu. The text mentions a Stoicus and, as Bischoff saw, Horace (Oratius). It put Stevens in mind of the poem Conflictus veris et hiemis, which is sometimes attributed to Alcuin (102). Later on, he claimed that Walahfrid's De conflictutext actually is the poem (324)! But the text and the poem have nothing in common but the words conflictu and conflictus. Walahfrid's De conflictu is a series of nine moral maxims ("Bodily senses are like horses, the soul like a charioteer") plucked from Jerome's Against Jovinianus (2. 9-12). It was Jerome who attributed "Scorn pleasure; she but hurts when bought with pain" to Horace. He also prefaced "Our soul directs, our body serves" with "Unde ait Historicus," an allusion to Sallust, his source for this aphorism, which somehow became Stoicus to Walahfrid. By neglecting to study Walahfrid's sixteen lines, Rhetoric and Reckoning not only misrepresented the text, but also missed an opportunity to explore one of the few glimpses of monastic life and the struggle (conflictus) to live as a monk that Walahfrid's collection offers. One wonders whether Walahfrid copied the maxims from an exemplar or whether he personally culled them from his reading of Jerome? Seneca's letter to Lucilius (ms pp. 348-350) on what constitutes the good life presents another missed opportunity. The only thing that caught Stevens' eye here was that the letter "refers to Horace: 'Horatius cocles solus implevit pontis angustias...'" (35, note 31). But this is not Horace, the Augustan poet, as the note implies, but the legendary early Republic figure Publius Horatius Cocles of "Horatio at the Bridge" fame as Seneca's letter makes abundantly clear. Did the author ever read the letter?
He certainly did not read another text that was important to Walahfrid when he wrote "During his last period, WIVc himself cheerfully added a note, Conservatio fleotomiae (ms. p. 366-367), on the preservation of flowing streams which are so valuable for the numerous personnel who live in any large complex of monastic buildings, certainly important in the large community of the Reichenau for which he was responsible" (88). This statement is so bizarre that it defies understanding. The text, Conservatio fleotomiae et dies caniculares, is about bloodletting, the proper seasons to do so, the right veins to select, the diseases to diagnose, and has nothing at all to do with streams, flowing or not. [4] A scholar of medieval computus certainly should have recognized dies caniculares in the first line and references to months, kalends, moons, and "Egyptian Days" in the text. [5] Again, the conclusion seems inescapable that the author who spent many years with Walahfrid and his manuscript never read this text before composing an utterly fantastical summary of it. One can only speculate where "flowing streams" came from. There is a pervasive tendency in the author's prose to Germanize nomenclature. Walahfrid wrote with a griffel (26) rather than a stylus. He moved in a world shaped by "Karl der Große" and peopled by "Ludwig der Fromme" and his sons "Ludwig der Deutsche" and "Karl der Kahle." He knew "the Reichenau" and "the Elsaß". That a North American author would insist on this nomenclature (not to mention "Beda" and "Ealhwine") might be considered quirky, annoying, or just quaint. It can also be embarrassing as when Bishop Ado of Vienne is forced to become bishop of "Wien" (99; 135; 380). Given this context, perhaps fleotomiae subliminally prompted connections to Fliessen or fliessen?
On a more positive note, the manuscript records that Walahfrid's book served readers for centuries. Later in the ninth or early tenth century, one reader glossed his medical recipes with Old High German words (ms p. 333). In the eleventh century, another reader transcribed the five-line epitaph of the priest Adelbertus, "spes populique salus," onto the same page after first testing his pen on ms p. 276. Neumed hymn fragments were added about the same time (ms pp. 276-277). During the thirteenth or early fourteenth century, a reader added across the top margins of ms pp. 269-270 Bishop John of Esztergom's (1205-1223) famously ambiguous reply to the schemers plotting to assassinate Queen Gertrude of Hungary (1205-1213): "Reginam occidere nolite, et si omnes consenserint / ego non, contradico." A few centuries later another reader assiduously underlined Walahfrid's copy of dietary recommendations keyed to seasons of the year (ms pp. 374-377) and converted all the dating clauses (e.g., "Ab octauo kalendarum ianuarium die") to modern practice ("25 decembris"). MS Saint Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, 878, still has volumes to speak. It just needs an attentive, careful, and curious listener.
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Notes:
1. Bischoff published an expanded version of his essay, "Eine Sammelhandschrift Walahfrid Strabos (Cod. Sangall. 878)," in 1967 in his Mittelalterliche Studien: Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1966-1981), 2: 34-51 (with photos). In 1979 Johanne Autenrieth concluded that the UUALAHFRID MON inscription in the Reichenau confraternity book, the only name rendered in capitals among 111 other Reichenau Nomina Viuorum Fratrum copied in minuscule, was not inscribed by the Walahfrid Bischoff identified in the Saint Gall manuscript. It may be time to examine the entire question anew. See Joanne Autenrieth, "Beschreibung des Codex," in Der Verbrüderungsbuch der Abtei Reichenau (Einleitung, Register, Faksimile), ed. Johanne Autenrieth, Dieter Geuenich, Karl Schmid (Hannover, 1979), pp. xxxiv-xxxvi. Saint Gall manuscripts are paginated. In this review I refer to its pages in the form "ms p. 000" to distinguish its pages from the pages of Rhetoric and Reckoning.
2. "Eine Sammelhandschrift," p. 41: "gänzlich schmucklos."
3. See ms pp. 193 (X///); 209 (XIIII); 225 (XV); 241 (XVI); 273 (XVIII); 321 (XXI); 367 (////). Signature XVIIII was visible in the nineteenth century at ms p. 289, but is no longer clearly readable, at least online. See Elias Steinmeyer and Eduard Sievers, Die althochdeutschen Glossen, vol. 4 (Berlin, 1898), 455.
4. Walahfrid in recounting the miracles of St. Gall included one that affected "Frater quidam eiusdem congregationis medicinali scientia non ignobiliter instructus, dum quodam tempore incidi sibi fleotomo venam fecisset." But he rushed the procedure and became terribly ill before the miracle saved him. See Vita Galli auctore Walahfrido II. 36, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH, SRM (Hannover, 1902), 4: 333.
5. See Augusto Beccaria I codici di medicina del periodo presalernitano (Rome, 1956), 391-393. Beccaria identified seven other copies of the text in eleventh and twelfth century manuscripts (p. 446). It also appears in MS Paris, BNF, lat. 2825, ff. 126v-127v, and BNF, n.a.l. 356, ff. 42v-43r, both likely tenth century.