Ordo Virtutum - Notker Balbulus.

Hl. Notker I. Balbulus - Gedenktag: am 6. April

Hl. Notker I. Balbulus
Mönch, Dichter
* um 840 in Jonschwil im Kanton St. Gallen in der Schweiz
† 6. April 912 in der Stadt St. Gallen in der Schweiz
Notker, Sohn einer Adelsfamilie, war mit einem Sprachfehler geboren. Noch als Kind kam er ins Kloster St. Gallen, dort wurde er in den klassischen Sprachen und klassischer Literatur ausgebildet. Er wurde Leiter der Klosterschule, war literarisch und musikalisch tätig und führte damit das Kloster zu großer Blüte. Er schrieb eine Biografie über Karl den Großen, die allerdings mehr ein Ideal beschreibt denn historisch gesicherte Tatsachen. Sein Hauptwerk war ein Hymnenbuch, das einen Höhepunkt mittelalterlicher Dichtung darstellt. Die Melodie eines Pfingstliedes habe er nach dem Takt eines knarrenden Mühlrades geschrieben.
Notkers Reliquien ruhen im Münster von St. Gallen.

Mariac 432. Blessed Notker the Stammerer (Latin: Notcerus Balbulus;[1] c. 840 – 6 April 912 AD), also called Notker I, Notker the Poet or Notker of Saint Gall, was a musician, author, poet, and Benedictine monk at the Abbey of Saint Gall in modern Switzerland. He is commonly accepted to be the "Monk of Saint Gall" (Monachus Sangallensis) who wrote Gesta Karoli, The deeds of Charlemagne see "Charlemagne a biography" by Derek Wilson page 146.
Notker was born around 840, to a distinguished family. He would seem to have been born at Jonschwil on the River Thur, south of Wil, in the modern canton of Saint Gall in Switzerland; some sources claim Elgg to be his place of birth. He studied with Tuotilo at Saint Gall's monastic school, and was taught by Iso of St. Gallen (de), and the Irishman, Moengall. He became a monk there and is mentioned as librarian in 890 and as master of guests in 892–4. He was chiefly active as a teacher, and displayed refinement of taste as poet and author.[2]
Ekkehard IV, the biographer of the monks of Saint Gall, lauds him as "delicate of body but not of mind, stuttering of tongue but not of intellect, pushing boldly forward in things Divine, a vessel of the Holy Spirit without equal in his time".[2] He died in 912. He was beatified in 1512.
The "Monk of Saint Gall" (Latin: Monachus Sangallensis; the name is not contemporary, being given by modern scholars), the ninth-century writer of a volume of didactic eulogistic anecdotes regarding the Emperor Charlemagne, is now commonly believed to be Notker the Stammerer.[4] This monk is known from his work to have been a native German-speaker, deriving from the Thurgau, only a few miles from the Abbey of Saint Gall; the region is also close to where Notker is believed to have derived from. The monk himself relates that he was raised by Adalbert, a former soldier who had fought against the Saxons, the Avars ("Huns" in his text) and the Slavs under the command of Kerold, brother of Hildegard, Charlemagne's second wife; he was also a friend of Adalbert's son, Werinbert, another monk at Saint Gall, who died as the book was in progress.[5] His teacher was Grimald von Weißenburg (de), the Abbot of Saint Gall from 841 to 872, who was, the monk claims, himself a pupil of Alcuin.
The monk's untitled work, referred to by modern scholars as De Carolo Magno ("Concerning Charles the Great") or Gesta Caroli Magni ("The Deeds of Charles the Great"), is not a biography but consists instead of two books of anecdotes relating chiefly to the Emperor Charlemagne and his family, whose virtues are insistently invoked. It was written for Charles the Fat,[6] great-grandson of Charlemagne, who visited Saint Gall in 883.[7] It has been scorned by traditional historians, who refer to the Monk as one who "took pleasure in amusing anecdotes and witty tales, but who was ill-informed about the true march of historical events", and describe the work itself as a "mass of legend, saga, invention and reckless blundering": historical figures are claimed as living when in fact dead; claims are attributed to false sources (in one instance,[8] the Monk claims that "to this King Pepin [the Short] the learned Bede has devoted almost an entire book of his Ecclesiastical History"; no such account exists in Bede's history – unsurprisingly, given that Bede died in 735 during the reign of Charlemagne's grandfather Charles Martel); and Saint Gall is frequently referenced as a location in anecdotes,[9] regardless of historical verisimilitude (Pepin the Hunchback, for example, is supposed to have been sent to Saint Gall as punishment for his rebellion, and – in a trope owed to Livy's tale of Tarquin and the poppies – earns a promotion to rich Prüm Abbey after advising Charlemagne through an implicit parable of hoeing thistles to execute another group of rebels). The Monk also mocks and criticizes bishops and the prideful, high-born incompetent, showy in dress and fastidious and lazy in habits, whilst lauding the wise and skillful government of the Emperor with nods to the deserving poor. Several of the Monk's tales, such as that of the nine rings of the Avar stronghold, have been used in modern biographies of Charlemagne.[citation needed]
The Monk of Saint Gall is commonly believed to be Notker the Stammerer: Louis Halphen[10] has delineated the points of similarity between the two: the Monk claims to be old, toothless and stammerering; and both share similar interests in church music, write with similar idioms, and are fond of quoting Virgil.[11] The text is dated to the 880s from mentions in it of Carloman (died 880), half-brother of Charles the Fat, the "circumscribed lands" of Carloman's son Arnulf, who succeeded as King of the Germans in 887, and the destruction of Prüm Abbey, which occurred in 882.