RATPERT OF SAINT GALL. - German writer, a native of Zurich, who lived in the second half of the 9th century, d. around 895.
He composed in Latin the chronicle of his monastery from its origins to 883, dwelling especially on the struggles sustained until 817 for the free election of the abbot and subordination to the king, against the rights of the bishops of Co-
n. at the beginning of the 9th century, d. ca. 875. A monk at Corbie around 825, he was a disciple of Paschasius Radbertus (v.), of Gottschalk of Orbais and a friend of Lupus Servatus of Ferrières (v.). He took an active part in the religious controversies of his time, acquiring a good reputation as a theologian (PL 121, 9-346).
The De Praedestinatione Dei libri duo (850) is a caustic attack, on the occasion of a consultation of Charles the Bald, against the doctrine of Hincmar of Reims (v.) in favor of the predestinarianism of Gottschalk of Orbais. The De nativitate Christi, while affirming the dogma of the perpetual virginity of Mary, presents an explanation of it (per uteri iannam) rejected by P. Radbertus and contrary to Catholic tradition. Of greater value is the Contra Graecorum opposita libri quattuor, concerning the consultation made by Pope Nicholas I with the bishops on the new attitudes of the East after the revolt of Photius (867). R. defends with erudition and acuteness the Filioque, ecclesiastical celibacy and the primacy of the pope. The Epistola de cynocephalis (cf. also MGH, Epistolae, VI, pp. 149-61: with other letters) is an original reply to Rimbert, future archbishop of Bremen, on the monsters of which St. Augustine speaks in the De Civitate Dei (16, 8). In the De Anima (ed. A. Wilmart, in Rev. bénéd., 24 [1931], pp. 207-33), addressed to Charles the Bald, he demonstrates the spirituality of the soul with personal arguments, which compromise its substantial union with the body; the work was attacked in the theological circle of Hincmar of Reims. Lost is the book on the legitimacy of the liturgical expression Te trina deitas unaque possimus (cf. Hincmar of Reims, De una et trina deitate: PL 125, 475, combats the justification published by R.). R. is above all famous for the treatise De Carpore et Sanguine Domini, written (after 856) at the request of Charles the Bald and dedicated to him, perhaps as a counterpart to the work of the same name by P. Radbertus, or, more probably, as a personal solution to the eucharistic problem emerging from two contrasting theological currents ideally reconstructed: some affirmed that in the Eucharist everything happens manifestly, without figure or external veil, so that the Body of Christ is palpable, subject to corruption (a materialistic conception, which preluded to stercoranism); others instead held that these realities are contained under the veil of mystery, so that one thing appears to the senses and another is believed by faith (a spiritualistic conception). R., more than P. Radbertus (v.), seems to attack a crude theory, perhaps widespread among the faithful, and therefore he inclines toward the spiritualistic conception, sometimes letting slip statements that seem to compromise the real presence. However, a detailed examination allows one to assert that R. remained within the line of orthodoxy, since he admits a true and invisible mutation of the eucharistic elements, whereby they become, after the Consecration, a totally different reality, that is stance. He also wrote metrical and rhythmical verses in the vernacular, one of which, in honor of St. Gall, has come down to us only in a Latin translation made at the beginning of the 11th century "for the purpose of not letting it fall into oblivion." The chronicle of R. was continued by Ekkehard IV up to 971 in his Casus S. Galli.