the work is presented as a pair of biographies, of Conrad and Henry. In the letter, written after 1046, the life of Conrad is presented as an independent work. The narrative opens with Conrad's election in 1024 and continues through his reign in an annalistic format, concluding with his death in 1039. Wipo's main source was his own memory and oral reports from other members of the court, but he also employed a chronicle written at the Reichenau Abbey. Wipo strews short snatches of hexameter poetry throughout the work, and appends a nine verse canticle in rhymed hexameters, which he wrote at the time of Conrad's death at the end of the biography. The opening letter and prologue claim that the work was intended to provide an account of an exemplary contemporary Christian prince, as a counterpoint to the Biblical kings of the Old Testament and the pagan rulers known from Classical literature. Both the Vulgate text of the Bible and Classical authors, especially Sallust and Macrobius' commentary on the Dream of Scipio, are frequently alluded to in the text. Wipo generally presents Conrad in very positive terms, sometimes modifying the facts in order to make Conrad a better exemplar. However, he declares himself willing to criticise Conrad for errors, and occasionally does so. Most biographies in Wipo's time were lives of saints or of kings presented as saintly figures, so the decision to write about Conrad as a layman was an innovative one. Karl F. Morrison characterises the work as "an honest if not penetrating annalistic account of a secular ruler in unecclesiastical, unsanctimonious terms." The work was not widely read in the Middle Ages and now survives in only a single manuscript held in the in Karlsruhe. Other works Among Wipo's other extant writings are the maxims, Proverbia (1027 or 1028), and Tetralogus Heinrici in rhymed hexameters. Presented to Henry in 1041, the Tetralogus is a eulogy of the emperor mixed with earnest exhortations, emphasising that right and law are the real foundations of the throne. The Gesta Chuonradi refers to other poetic works that are now lost: a Gallinarius (probably on Conrad's conquest of Burgundy), a hundred verses on the especially cold Burgundian winter of 1033, and an account of Conrad's 1035 campaign against the Slavs and the massacre that followed. The famous sequence for Easter, Victimae paschali laudes is also attributed to Wipo, but this is