Education
Williram studied under Lanfranc.
Williram studied under Lanfranc.
He is best known for his "Expositio in Cantica Canticorum", a complex commentary of the Song of Songs which includes an Old High German translation and a Latin verse paraphrase. He was a Canon at the Cathedral chapter of Bamberg, monk in Fulda. Soon after, Henry III made him abbot to the Benedictine abbey of Ebersberg, where he remained until his death.
In the preface to his Expositio which he dedicated to Henry IV, Williram laments that, in Germany, grammar and dialectics are more popular than Biblical studies, praises Lanfranc devoting himself to the deeper study of the Bible and drawing many German scholars to France.
The pages of his work are divided into three columns: The first contains a Latin paraphrase in Leonine hexameters of the Vulgate followed for each of the 150 paragraphs of the Song of Songs by a paraphrase of the prose commentary on the right hand side column. The second, the Vulgate text.
And the third, an Old High German prose translation followed by a commentary in Latin-German mixed prose exposition. Williram describes his text as supporting the "body" of the Bible text which is marked up with the "voces" of Christ, the Synagogue and the Church.
Williram"s commentary is the Old High German text with the highest number of surviving manuscripts, right up to the print tradition.
lieutenant is remarkable that two manuscripts are extant which were probably written during his lifetime in the Abbey of Ebersberg. One of these, the codex Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cgm 10, contains also his Latin poems. About 1100, a Middle Dutch adaptation of Williram"s commentary was produced, the oldest surviving text in Middle Dutch.
Williram is believed also to be the author of the Chronicon Eberspergense, a set of monastic annals included in the Ebersberg cartulary, which he also compiled.