Translating Popular Wisdom into Learned Language and Practice: Egbert of Liège’s Fecunda ratis and the Changing World of the Eleventh Century

Kümper, Hiram (2025) Translating Popular Wisdom into Learned Language and Practice: Egbert of Liège’s Fecunda ratis and the Changing World of the Eleventh Century. THE HUNGARIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW, 14 (2). pp. 186-213. ISSN 2063-8647 (print); 2063-9961 (online)

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Abstract

This paper explores the Fecunda ratis, Egbert of Liège’s early eleventh-century didacticpoem in Latin, as an example of the transformation of vernacular, orally transmittedwisdom into structured, literary pedagogy. Drawing on recent theoretical and philologicalresearch, it develops a typology of proverbial adaptation in Egbert’s work and analyzesthe rhetorical and poetic strategies employed to integrate popular sayings into the moraland educational discourse of the cathedral school. In doing so, the study situates theFecunda ratis within the broader context of the emerging homiletic and didactic cultureof the eleventh century, highlighting its role in shaping the clerical ethos and institutionalmemory through the literary canonization of the popular voice.

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