house and severely wounded him in a murderous assault. The whole affair was obscure, and Wakley was even suspected, unjustly, of setting fire to his house himself; but he won his case against the insurance company which contested his claim. He became a friend of William Cobbett, with whose radicalism he was in sympathy. In 1823 he started the well-known medical weekly paper, the Lancet, and began a series of attacks on the jobbery in vogue among the practitioners of the day, who were accustomed to treat the medical profession as a close borough. In opposition to the hospital doctors he insisted on publishing reports of their lectures and exposing various malpractices, and he had to fight a number of lawsuits, which, however, only increased his influence. He attacked the whole constitution of the Royal College of Surgeons, and obtained so much support from among the general body of the profession, now roused to a sense of the abuses he exposed, that in 1827 a petition to parliament resulted in a return being ordered of the public money granted to it. But reform in the college was slow, and Wakley now set himself to rouse the House of Commons from within. He became a radical candidate for parliament, and in 1835 was returned for Finsbury, retaining his seat till 1852. In this capacity, and also as coroner for West Middlesex—an appointment he secured in 1839—he was indefatigable in upholding the interests of the working classes and advocating humanitarian reforms, as well as in pursuing his campaign against medical restrictions and abuses; and he made the Lancet not only a professional organ but a powerful engine of social reform. He died on the 16th of May 1862, leaving three sons, the proprietorship of the Lancet remaining in the family.
See Samuel Squire Sprigge, Life and Times of Thomas Wakley (1897).
WALACHIA, or Wallachia, a former principality of south-eastern Europe, constituting, after its union with Moldavia on the 9th of November 1859, a part of Rumania (q.v.).
WALAFRID[1] STRABO (or Strabus, i.e. “squint-eyed”) (d. 849), German monk and theological writer, was born about 808 in Swabia. He was educated at the monastery of Reichenau, near Constance, where he had for his teachers Tatto and Wettin, to whose visions he devotes one of his poems. Then he went on to Fulda, where he studied for some time under Hrabanus Maurus before returning to Reichenau, of which monastery he was made abbot in 838. There is a story—based, however, on no good evidence—that Walafrid devoted himself so closely to letters as to neglect the duties of his office, owing to which he was expelled from his house; but, from his own verses, it seems that the real cause of his flight to Spires was that, notwithstanding the fact that he had been tutor to Charles the Bald, he espoused the side of his elder brother Lothair on the death of Louis the Pious in 840. He was, however, restored to his monastery in 842, and died on the 18th of August 849, on an embassy to his former pupil. His epitaph was written by Hrabanus Maurus, whose elegiacs praise him for being the faithful guardian of his monastery.
Walafrid Strabo’s works are theological, historical and poetical. Of his theological works the most famous is the great exegetical compilation which, under the name of Glosa ordinaria or the Glosa, remained for some 500 years the most widespread and important quarry of medieval biblical science, and even survived the Reformation, passing into numerous editions as late as the 17th century (see Hist. littéraire de la France, t. v. p. 59 ff.). The oldest known copy, in four folio volumes, of which the date and origin are unknown, but which is certainly almost entirely Walafrid’s work, gives us his method. In the middle of the pages is the Latin text of the Bible; in the margins are the “glosses,” consisting of a very full collection of patriotic excerpts in illustration and explanation of the text. There is also an exposition of the first twenty psalms (published by Pez in Anecdota nova, iv.) and an epitome of Hrabanus Maurus's commentary on Leviticus. An Expositio quatuor Evangeliorum is also ascribed to Walafrid. Of singular interest also is his De exordiis et incrementis rerum ecclesiasticarum, written between 840 and 842 and dedicated to Regenbert the librarian. It deals in 32 chapters with ecclesiastical usages, churches, altars, prayers, bells, pictures, baptism and the Holy Communion. Incidentally he introduces into his explanations the current German expressions for the things he is treating of, with the apology that Solomon had set him the example by keeping monkeys as well as peacocks at his court. Of special interest is the fact that Walafrid, in his exposition of the Mass, shows no trace of any belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation as taught by his famous contemporary Radbertus (q.v.); according to him, Christ gave to his disciples the sacraments of his Body and Blood in the substance of bread and wine, and taught them to celebrate them as a memorial of his Passion.
Walafrid's chief historical works are the rhymed Vita sancti Galli, which, though written nearly two centuries after this saint's death, is still the primary authority for his life, and a much shorter life of St Othmar, abbot of St Gall (d. 759).[2] A critical edition of them by E. Dummler is in the Monumenta Germaniae hist. Poëtae Latini, ii. (1884), p. 259 ff. Walafrid's poetical works also include a short life of St Blaithmaic, a high-born monk of Iona, murdered by the Danes in the first half of the 9th century; a life of St Mammas; and a Liber de visionibus Wettini. This last poem, like the two preceding ones written in hexameters, was composed at the command of “Father” Adalgisus, and based upon the prose narrative of Heto, abbot of Reichenau from 806 to 822. It is dedicated to Wettin's brother Grimald. At the time he sent it to Grimald Walafrid had, as he himself tells us, hardly passed his eighteenth year, and he begs his correspondent to revise his verses, because, “as it is not lawful for a monk to hide anything from his abbot,” he fears he may be beaten with deserved stripes. In this curious vision Wettin saw Charles the Great suffering purgatorial tortures because of his incontinence. The name of the ruler alluded to is not indeed introduced into the actual text, but “Carolus Imperator” form the initial letters of the passage dealing with this subject. Many of Walafrid's other poems are, or include, short addresses to kings and queens (Lothair, Charles, Louis, Pippin, Judith, &c.) and to friends (Einhard, Grimald, Hrabanus Maurus, Tatto, Ebbo, archbishop of Reims, Drogo, bishop of Metz, &c.). His most famous poem is the Hortulus, dedicated to Grimald. It is an account of a little garden that he used to tend with his own hands, and is largely made up of descriptions of the various herbs he grows there and their medicinal and other uses. Sage holds the place of honour; then comes rue, the antidote of poisons; and so on through melons, fennel, lilies, poppies, and many other plants, to wind up with the rose, “which in virtue and scent surpasses all other herbs, and may rightly be called the flower of flowers.” The curious poem De Imagine Tetrici takes the form of a dialogue; it was inspired by an equestrian statue of Theodoric the Great which stood in front of Charlemagne's palace at Aix-la-Chapelle.
For a bibliography of Walafrid's historical works, and of writings dealing with them, see Potthast, Bibliotheca hist. med. aevi (Berlin, 1894), p. 1102 ff. Walafrid's works are published in Migne's Patrologia Latina, vols, cxiii. and cxiv. For further references see the article by Eduard Seuss and A. Hauck in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (Leipzig, 1908), xx. 790.
WALCH, JOHANN GEORG (1693–1775), German theologian, was born on the 17th of June 1693 at Meiningen, where his father, Georg Walch, was general superintendent. He studied at Leipzig and Jena, amongst his teachers being J. F. Buddeus (1667–1729), whose only daughter he married. He published in 1716 a work, Historia critica Latinae linguae, which soon came into wide use. Two years later he became professor extraordinarius of philosophy at Jena. In 1719 he was appointed professor ordinarius of rhetoric, in 1721 of poetry, and in 1724 professor extraordinarius of theology. In 1728 he became professor ordinarius of theology, and in 1750 professor primarius. His theological position was that of a very moderate orthodoxy, which had been influenced greatly by the philosophy and controversies of the Deistic period. His university lectures and published works ranged over the wide fields of church history in its various branches, particularly the literature and the controversies of the church, dogmatics, ethics and pastoral theology. He died on the 13th of January 1775.
Of his works the most valuable were Bibliotheca theologica (1757–1765); Bibliotheca patristica (1770, new ed. 1834); his edition of Luther's works in 24 vols. (1740–1752); Historische und theologische Einleitung in die religiösen Streitigkeiten, welche sonderlich ausser der ev.-lutherischen Kirche entstanden (5 vols., 1733 ff.); the companion work to this, Einleitung in die Religionsstreitigkeiten der evangel. luth. Kirche (1730–1739), and Philosophisches Lexikon (1726, 4th ed. 1775). His life, with a complete list of his writings, which amounted to 287, Leben und Charakter des Kirchenraths J. G. Walch, was published anonymously by his son C. W. F. Walch (Jena, 1777). Cf. Wilhelm Gass, Protestantische Dogmatik, iii. p. 205 sq.
His son, Johann Ernst Immanuel (1725–1778), studied Semitic languages at Jena, and also natural science and mathematics. In 1749 he published Einleitung in die Harmonie der
