Notker the Stammerer (Balbulus), Blessed

NOTKER THE STAMMERER (Balbulus), Blessed. - Benedictine, poet and writer, b. ca. 840 at Heiligau (today Elgg) in the canton of Zurich or, more probably, at Jonswil, in the canton of St. Gallen; d. 6 April 912 in the monastery of St. Gallen.

At St. Gall, N. was librarian in 890 and hospitarius in 892 and 894. He completed the Breviarium regum Francorum; he wrote a Martyrology, important for the breadth of its hagiography, and probably the Gesta Caroli Magni (MGH, Scriptores, II, ed. G. H. Pertz, pp. 731-63). He devoted himself especially to music and to sequences, a kind of religious lyric whose text, for mnemonic reasons, is set to the iubili of the alleluia psalms of the Mass; it is only doubtful whether the sequences composed by N. had exactly the form and extent found in cod. 376 of St. Gall, in which they have come down to us (ed. in C. Blume, Analecta hymnica, LIII, Leipzig 1911). Four hymns on death and the miracles are certainly original of St. Stephen (ibid., LI, p. 229 ff.) and a Vita s. Galli (ed. in Neues Archiv, 38 [1913], pp. 57-93) are certainly original; to these must be added the Notatio, in which N. treats at length of the commentators on the Bible.

His feast is celebrated at St. Gallen on 8 April, from 1512, and in the diocese of Constance from 1513. The relics have been in the monastery since 1628. Iconographically N. is depicted as a monk striking the devil with a staff.

Luciano Gulli