SAINT GALL. - City and diocese of Switzerland, capital of the canton of the same name. The diocese also includes the two cantons of Appenzell.
It has an area of about 2,420 sq km, with a population of 344,340 inhabitants, of whom 188,553 are Catholics, distributed in 133 parishes, served by 341 diocesan priests and 145 regulars; it has a seminary, 12 male religious communities and 31 female (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 353).
St. Gall reached, with St. Columban, the southwestern shores of Lake Constance at the castrum Arbonae, north of present-day St. G. While, after smashing the idols, St. Columban erected a chapel in honor of St. Aurelia, St. Gall chose his hermitage between the two rivers Steinach and Reuss, in the place called Hinchinberg, where around 613 arose the monastery in which the Rule of St. Columban was adopted. St. Gall died there on 16 Oct. 627 and was laid in the Oratory. His life was written by Wettin and then, in the 11th century, by Walafrid Strabo of Reichenau. The abbot Otmar, who governed the monastery from 720 to 759, introduced there the Rule of St. Benedict; the abbot Gozbert, following a design by Loturius, bishop of Toul (813-46), began in 829 the reconstruction of the monastery, completed in 841, and organized its Library. In the 10th century the monks sang the Gloria and the Pater in Greek and in Latin (cf. S. Beissel, Geschichte der Evangelienbücher in der ersten Hälfte des Mittelalters, Freiburg im Br. 1906, p. 77). Under Frederick Barbarossa the abbot became a prince of the Empire and therefore the abbey was transformed into an ecclesiastical principality, which gradually extended its boundaries, but already in the 13th century it was heading toward decline. The wealth of its Library was admirable for the number of its illuminated manuscripts: Bibles, liturgical books, martyrologies, sacramentaries, antiphonaries, lectionaries, breviaries. Among the most precious are remembered those with miniatures of the Irish school; furthermore the Psalterium quadruplex of Solomon III (891-920), the Psalterium aureum in uncial (J. Rud Rahn, Das psalterium aureum von S. Gallen, St. Gall 1878). The most flourishing period of the scriptorium was under the abbots Bernwick and Engelbert I and lasted from the 9th century to the middle of the 11th century: from this period magnificent codices in Carolingian script are possessed (v.). However, already in the 13th century (from the earlier period there are no examples) the scriptorium had been very active and had given life to a type of pre-Carolingian script with round and regular letters, but hard in stroke due to Irish influence: some codices of St. G. are in fact in insular script (cf. K. Löffler, in Palaeographia lat., 6 [1929], pp. 5-66; id., in Neue Heidelberger Jahrb., 1937, pp. 28-54). Under the abbot Hartmann (921-24) Greek monks were also part of it. The abbot Artmut (872-73) enriched the monastery with manuscripts, among them a psalter; under the abbot Solomon III there appeared the Vocabolarium Salomonis and the two ivory tablets, Evangelium longum; the monk Tutilo made ivory bindings (in the 17th century there was also a printing press created by the abbot P. Reher). At the time of Engelbert II (924-33), under the danger of the Magyar invasion, the Library was put in safety at Reichenau, but not all the best codices returned; then it suffered from Protestant looting; another looting occurred in 1728; in 1797 it was sent to Mehrerau to save it from French plundering and returned there in 1804.
Distinguished masters in the abbey were: Moengall, Iso, Radpert, Notker the Stammerer (d. 912), who composed sequences and sacred hymns; the abbot Eckart IV, author of the Casus S. Galli; excellent librarians Luitard (861-72), Uto (862), Notker I (890), Waldram (beginning of the 10th century); Ulrich VIII (1463-91), Peter of Gaisberg (1504-29). In 1804 the abbey was secularized and the principality abolished; in 1805 the monks were expelled; the last abbot was P. Voster, d. 1829 in the abbey of Muri. Following the agreements between the bishop of Constance and the abbot of St. G. (1613, 1748 and 1814), Pope Pius VII, with the bull Ecclesias of 2 July 1823, created the diocese of St. G. united "aeque principaliter" with the diocese of Chur, and its first bishop was Msgr. Karl Schauenstein. But after his death an apostolic vicar was appointed in the person of Msgr. G. P. Mirer, who on 10 Oct. 1846 was elected bishop and on 8 Apr. 1847 saw the diocese canonically erected.
Among his successors are remembered Msgr. A. Egger (1882-1906), F. Ruegg (1906-13), R. Bürkler (1913-30); A. Scheiwiler (1931-37); J. Meile from 1938.
In the Cathedral building four periods can be distinguished: the first after about 820, due to the abbot Eito of Reichenau with a double choir and crypt; the second of the abbot Gozbert with the church of St. Otmar (9th century) with adaptations in the 11th century; the third of the abbot Norbert with the church of St. Michael (11th century) and then the present Cathedral, the work of Celestine II Gugger von Standbach (1755-67), an era in which the other monastic buildings were also modified. - See pl. CXI.
Bibliography17 works
Enrico Josi