Notker I (The Stammerer) - "Dilecte Deo"
Bl. Notker Balbulus - Feast Day: May 7 (c. 840-912)
classical melody Notker I ( The Stammerer ) "Dilecte Deo" performed by Ensemble Gilles Binchois and Dominique Vellard in France, 1997.
Notker was the son of noble Swiss parents. His father and mother sent him, when he was a child, to be educated in the Benedictine Abbey of St. Gall, Switzerland. In medieval times Benedictine monks often accepted youngsters as boarding students in their monastery schools. There may have been an additional reason for entrusting Notker to these monks. He was frail in health and stammered. (That is the meaning of his nickname “Balbulus”.)
When he was a teenager, Notker decided to stay on at St. Gall as a monk. Frailty of body did not keep him from becoming a leader in this religious community. It was later said of him that he was “weakly in body but not in mind, stammering of tongue but not of intellect, pressing forward boldly in things divine–a vessel filled with …More