Williram was a Frank from a well-off and well-connected family. Born circa 1020, he was educated first in Bamberg (it is not clear where else) and became a monk in Fulda, a monastery linked with the imperial house and a major intellectual center. In 1040 he became head of the school in Bamberg and seems to have counted on the patronage of Emperor Heinrich III, who gave him the abbacy of the small monastery of Ebersberg in Bavaria in 1048. It was there that Williram composed his major work, the Expositio in Cantica Canticorum (Commentary on the Song of Songs), around 1060. Heinrich III had died in 1056, and although Williram sent a copy with a dedicatory Latin poem to his successor, Heinrich IV, probably in 1069, the latter appears not to have been sympathetic to Williram's pleas to let him return to Fulda. Williram's comments on Ebersberg are far from positive, but he...