NOTKERO il BALBUZIENTE (Balbulus), blessed. — Benedictine, poet and writer, born c. 840 at Heiligau (now Elgg) in the canton of Zurich or, more probably, at Jonswil, in the canton of S. Gallo; died on 6 April 912 in the monastery of S. Gallo.
At S. Gallo, 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 fitted to the jubilations of the Alleluia psalms of the Mass; it is only uncertain whether the sequences composed by N. had exactly the form and extent found in cod. 376 of S. Gallo, in which they have come down to us (ed. in C. Blume, Analecta hymnica, LIII, Lipsia 1911). Certainly original are four hymns on the death and miracles
of s. Stefano (ibid., LI, p. 229 sgg.) and a Vita s. Galli (ed. in Neues Archiv, 38 [1913], pp. 57–93); to these must be added the Notatio, in which N. deals extensively with commentators on the Bible.
His feast is observed at S. Gallo on 8 April, from 1512 onward, and in the diocese of Costanza from 1513. His relics have been in the monastery since 1628. In iconography, N. is represented as a monk striking the devil with a stick.