Egbert of Liège, in , was an 11th-century educator and author, working at the

cathedral school Cathedral schools began in the Early Middle Ages as centers of advanced education, some of them ultimately evolving into medieval universities. Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, they were complemented by the monastic schools. Some of these ...

Liège Liège ( ; ; ; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and Municipalities in Belgium, municipality of Wallonia, and the capital of the Liège Province, province of Liège, Belgium. The city is situated in the valley of the Meuse, in the east o ...

(in what is now Belgium). His main work, produced around 1023, is an educational collection entitled ''Fecunda Ratis'' ("The Richly Laden Ship"), divided into two parts, the "Prora" (

Prow The bow () is the forward part of the hull (watercraft), hull of a ship or boat, the point that is usually most forward when the vessel is underway. The aft end of the boat is the stern. Prow may be used as a synonym for bow or it may mean the f ...

), containing proverbs and classical and secular stories, and the "Puppis" (

Poop deck In naval architecture, a poop deck is a deck that forms the roof of a cabin built in the rear, or " aft", part of the superstructure of a ship. The name originates from the French word for stern, , from Latin . Thus the poop deck is technic ...

) with extracts from

biblical The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) biblical languages ...

and

patristic Patristics, also known as Patrology, is a branch of theological studies focused on the writings and teachings of the Church Fathers, between the 1st to 8th centuries CE. Scholars analyze texts from both orthodox and heretical authors. Patristics em ...

writers. The collection contains the earliest known precursor of the

Little Red Riding Hood "Little Red Riding Hood" () is a fairy tale by Charles Perrault about a young girl and a Big Bad Wolf. Its origins can be traced back to several pre-17th-century European Fable, folk tales. It was later retold in the 19th-century by the Broth ...

story, entitled "". A critical edition of the ''Fecunda Ratis'' by Ernst Voigt was published in the series ''

Monumenta Germaniae Historica The (Latin for "Historical Monuments of Germany"), frequently abbreviated MGH, is a comprehensive series of carefully edited and published primary sources, both chronicle and archival, for the study of parts of Northwestern, Central and Souther ...

'' in 1889. An English translation by Robert Gary Babcock has been published as book 25 in the ''

Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library The Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (est. 2010) is a series of books published by Harvard University Press in collaboration with the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. It presents editions of texts originally written in medieval Latin ...

'' (Harvard University Press, 2013). An extract describes the origins of the red riding hood:

References

External links

Scans of Voigt edition
at Internet Archive. Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown Writers from Liège 11th-century writers in Latin 11th-century writers from the Holy Roman Empire Educators from the Holy Roman Empire {{Belgium-bio-stub