Notker of Liège

Notker of Liège (Notger, in Latin Notgerus) was a Benedictine monk, bishop of Liège from 972 to 1008 and first prince-⁠bishop of Liège, from 980. He was born around 940 and died on 10 April 1008.

He was appointed bishop by the emperor Otto I (or Otto II), as a suffragan of the archbishop of Cologne. When in 980 he received the countship of Huy, he simultaneously obtained secular power for the see and became the first prince-⁠bishop. He traveled to Rome for the coronation of Otto II by Pope Gregory V, and later negotiated a peace treaty between Henry II and Robert, king of France. He adhered faithfully to the cause of the emperor Otto III, whom he accompanied to Rome, and he brought Otto's body back to Germany, praying at his funeral in 1002.

After receiving secular power, he transformed the episcopal city into the capital of an ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire. He built a new cathedral, Saint Lambert's, seven collegiate churches, among them Saint John's in Liège, after the model of Aachen Cathedral, two abbeys and a city wall. He laid the foundation of the fame of the schools of Liège, to which studious youths soon flocked from all Christendom; by procuring the services of Leo the Calabrian, he made possible the study of Greek. Among his pupils are Hubald, Wazo of Liège, Franco, Gunther of Salzburg, Ruthard of Mainz, Erluin of Cambrai, Heimo of Verdun, Hesselo of Toul, Heriger of Lobbes, Adelmann, Gozechin and Adalbald of Utrecht. Under his rule Liège was sometimes called the Northern Athens. He appears also to have commissioned the Evangeliary of Notker.

He is counted among the saintly bishops of the West, before 1054; our sources give no details of the cult, and no Orthodox synodal canonization is known.