NOTKERO. — Called “Labeo” because of his thick lips. A monk of St Gall, the third and most illustrious bearer of this name, head of that famous monastic school which he brought to its highest splendour. Born about the middle of the 10th century, he died of the plague on 26 June 1022. He was hailed as “nostrae memoria hominum doctissimus.” His entire literary output consists solely of translations of Latin classics, especially those used as school texts.
Among the many versions he produced, noteworthy are his translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, the Noces of Philosophy and Mercury by Martianus Capella, Boethius’s commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories and On Interpretation, the Psalms (the most widely read biblical book of the time and indeed the one on which children learned to read, with the glosses of St Augustine), and several lesser works. Whether he also translated Virgil’s Eclogues, Cato’s De moribus and Terence’s Andria remains uncertain; yet it is certain that some of his completed works have been lost, among them what appears to have been a translation of Job. Notker’s method in rendering classical texts was an extraordinary innovation in the pedagogy of his day. Whereas previously the school of St Gall had used only simple glosses written above or between the lines, Notker was the first to compose
NOTKERO — NOTORIETÀ
DE IURE ET DE FACTO
1962
a continuous running commentary.
He also wrote a Life of St Stephen (loc. cit., LI, pp. 220 ff.) and a Life of St Gall (ed. in Neues Archiv, 38 [1913], pp. 57–93); to these must be added the Notatio, in which Notker treats at length of biblical commentators.
His feast is kept at St Gall on 8 April, from 1512 onward, and in the diocese of Constance from 1513. His relics have been preserved in the monastery since 1628. In iconography he is depicted as a monk striking the devil with a staff.