Library › Latin: Myth, Hymn & Religion › Visio Wettini
This poem in hexameters recounts the vision of Wetti, a monk and teacher of Reichenau who, in 824, shortly before his death, was led by an angel through the places of punishment and glory in the other world. Walafrid Strabo, then a young monk who had been Wetti’s pupil, versified the prose account written by Heito, former abbot of Reichenau and bishop of Basel, at the command of Abbot Adalgis. A prefatory letter dedicates the poem to the chaplain Grimald, Wetti’s kinsman. The poem begins with the history of the abbots of Reichenau, then narrates the vision, including the punishment of wicked priests, monks and counts, and an emperor (identified in an acrostic as Charlemagne) punished for his lust.
The Visio Wettini is one of the most important vision texts of the Carolingian age and a forerunner of the medieval literature of the other world that culminates in Dante. It uses the vision to criticise the clergy, monks and lay rulers of the day, and its veiled attack on Charlemagne is remarkable. It is also the first major work of Walafrid, written at about eighteen, and shows his early mastery of Latin verse.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from Corpus Corporum, the Latin text repository of the University of Zurich (edition: Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 114, Parisiis 1852), reused with attribution for non-commercial purposes (CC BY-NC-SA). Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.