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

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