Notker the Stammerer

Notker the Stammerer (Notker Balbulus), born about 840 near the Abbey of Saint Gall in present-⁠day Switzerland and died there on 6 April 912, was a Benedictine monk, composer, poet and scholar. He is regarded as a significant figure in the Western Church. He was never formally canonized; he is honoured by the Abbey of Saint Gall and in calendars as a saint of the undivided Church, venerated by the faithful without a synodal canonization. He is called the Stammerer because he had a lifelong stutter, after losing teeth in his youth.

He was schooled in the abbey from childhood, alongside the monks Tuotilo and Ratpert, all three composers; among his teachers were the Swiss monk Iso and the Irish monk Moengal. He was librarian (890), master of guests (892 and 894) and then master of the monastic school; one of his pupils was Solomon, bishop of Constance from 890 to 912. The emperor Charles the Fat, who visited the abbey from 4 to 6 December 883, asked his counsel. He repeatedly declined the abbacy, at Saint Gall or elsewhere. Ekkehard IV praised him as delicate of body but not of mind, stuttering of tongue but not of intellect, a vessel of the Holy Spirit without equal in his time.

He compiled the Liber Hymnorum (Book of Hymns), completed in 884, a collection of sequences, texts with melodies, arranged by the church year and dedicated to Bishop Liutward of Vercelli. In its preface he says he was inspired by an antiphoner brought to Saint Gall from the abbey of Jumièges after its destruction in 851, in which verses were set to the melodies, making them easier to remember. An early biography of Charlemagne, the Gesta Karoli Magni, is also attributed to him, as well as a Life of Saint Gall and a martyrology. He is commemorated on 6 April (new style; 19 April in the old style).