The Reichenau monk and abbot Walahfrid Strabo (808/09–849) was one of the most fascinating and versatile scholars of the 9th century. His intellectual curiosity spanned disciplines such as astronomy, time reckoning, natural science, and medicine, as well as historiography, prognotics, grammar, rhetoric, and poetry. This diversity of interests is reflected in Walahfrid's so-called Vademecum, a handbook (St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek 878), the compilation of which he had begun during his studies as a young scholar in Reichenau (824/25) and Fulda (827–829) and, with the help of several other scribes, continued to assemble from various texts covering the mentioned disciplines in different libraries such as Murbach, Aachen, and Prum, until his death in 849.

The selection of texts included in the handbook reveals an exceptionally independent scholar who was able to creatively absorb and connect the disciplines of the septem artes liberales in a very idiosyncratic way. In this specific form, the compendium could serve as a collection of material for Walahfrid's own texts, but also as a collection of partly basic and partly advanced teaching material at the monastery school. The text copies are guided by Walahfrid’s interests and show correspondence with his own textual compositions.

The present online editions of the texts which Walahfrid incorporated into his handbook aim to place the versions of the sources he copied or had copied into the broader context of their Carolingian transmission. The editions are in search of traces that might indicate which sources the scholar used. They attempt to answer the questions of how he altered and adapted the texts for his handbook, what he omitted, and what he added—sometimes supplemented and continued with his own textual passages and compositions. Finally, the editions can provide a picture of how Walahfrid’s copies relate to the parallel transmission of these texts in other older and contemporary manuscripts.

The specific arrangement and editing of the texts in Walahfrid's handbook allow for an investigation into the intellectual practice of copying, comparing, redacting, and disseminating texts by Carolingian scholars and scribes, and place Walahfrid within the context of the scholarly network. This enriches the understanding of the knowledge culture, knowledge transfer, and knowledge networking of this era.

The editions are accompanied by chapters in which selected aspects of content and inherent intertextual relationships are analyzed. Additionally, a monograph on Walahfrid's compendium by the author, which will focus on the contexts of the integrated sources, their source texts and models, and their relations to Walahfrid's own textual compositions, is in progress.