Wetti of Reichenau

An example of dream literature, the Vision of Wetti reflects Carolingian afterlife conceptions of punishment and salvation; it was widely read throughout contemporary monastic communities and is generally considered one of the influences on Dante's Divine Comedy.

It provides a more detailed account of the saint's work in establishing the monastery of St Gall, his later life, death, and the miracles around his grave until the end of the eighth century.

[12] Before it began to torment him a swarm of demons pushed their way into the room, but they were turned away by the monks and an angel peculiarly dressed in purple robes.

On awaking Wetti told his dream to the other monks and asked them to read aloud passages from Gregory's Dialogues regarding the afterlife, something which may have influenced the next vision.

The same angel, this time in white, entered the room and led him through to purgatory, where Wetti was made to witness sinners suffering contrapasso punishments.

It is revealed that Wetti will die the following day and that he will ultimately be doomed to punishment because he had apparently become "smothered with laziness ... [and] shunned his duty" as a responsible educator, and had also perhaps corrupted his students in lurid ways.

On November 4, 824 Wetti died, in much the same way as he described St Gall's death only a few years earlier – in prayer, surrounded by monks, friends and students.

[20] These accounts of alleged visions or dreams follow a typical structure in which visionaries, after falling asleep, are led by angelic guides through other worlds, where they are made to witness sinners' punishments.

Furthermore, what explicitly appears in Wetti's visions not only reveals a great deal about his perspectives on wealth, lust, gender relations and monastic responsibility, but also the degree to which these issues (excluding monasticism) pervaded all levels of lay and religious officialdom in 9th-century Carolingian France.

[26] In so doing, Walahfrid obviously intended to answer Wetti's call which may otherwise have fallen on deaf ears, of identifying and condemning materialistic and sexual excesses in the Frankish political and religious hierarchies, something Heito, through omission and editing, was apparently unprepared to do.

[32] Ernst Dümmler's 1884 editions of Heito and Walahfrid's Visio Wettini have been digitally recorded, and are publicly accessible on the Monumenta Germaniae Historica website.