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The Libellus of the Carolingian monk Walahfrid presents a first history of the Eucharistic liturgy, with special reference to topics such as fasting, frequency of communion, and arrangement of sections of the mass. Walahfrid also examines the origins of certain liturgical actions in baptism, traces the development of hymnography, and considers the etymology of various terms for church architecture. Walahfrid's unusually explicit citation of sources makes his work of particular value to the modern historian. This translation is the first into modern English. The commentary establishes the place of the language and argument in the development of early writings on the liturgy, while also relating it to the wider context of non-liturgical writings from the Fathers to mid-ninth century. The author's detailed examinations of Walahfrid's sources—historical, legislative and literary—show the lines of transmission of texts and their availability in the Carolingian period.
A modest man of great accomplishments, Walahfrid was a fine poet, teacher, abbot, gardener, liturgist, and diplomat. His personal notebook reveals that he loved arithmetic and astronomy. For a decade, he tutored Carolus iunior, youngest son of Judith and Ludwig der Fromme, who became emperor Charles the Bald. On two occasions, Walahfrid found and transcribed formulae and explanations of time series, often correcting them. By identifying Walahfrid's sources and scripts, Professor Stevens is able to trace his life and scholarship, as they relate to Carolingian politics and schools in the first half of ninth-century Europe.
Walahfrid's Visio Wettini is the earliest extended account of an otherworld vision in verse and represents an important stage in the development of the genre almost 500 years before Dante. The visionary is escorted by an angel through hell, purgatory and paradise. This edition includes the only translation of and commentary on the poem. The text is based on a fresh recension of the manuscripts.
Cultural Writing. Gardening. Widely regarded as the first gardening book in European history, and currently the only translation available in English, this book was written in the ninth century by Walafrid Strabo, Abbot of the Carolingian monastery at Reichenau Island. It tells us what our medieval gardener is growing in his garden, explains the benefits and medicinal properties of the plants, and gives an idea of how they are to be looked after. James Mitchell introduces and translates this classic from the original Latin hexameters, and S.F. Bay Area gardening columnist Richard Schwarzenberger provides a foreword.
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Fresh examinations of the role of medicinal plants in medieval thought and practice and how they contributed to broader ideas concerning the body, religion and identity. The important and ever-shifting role of medicinal plants in medieval science, art, culture, and thought, both in the Latin Western medical tradition and in Byzantine and medieval Arabic medicine, is the focus of this new collection. Following a general introduction and a background chapter on Late Antique and medieval theories of wellness and therapy, in-depth essays treat such wide-ranging topics as medicine and astrology, charms and magical remedies, herbal glossaries, illuminated medical manuscripts, women's reproductive ...