Notker

Notker the Stammerer also known as Notker Balbulus or simply Notker, was a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of Saint Gall, now in Switzerland, where he was a leading literary scholar of the Early Middle Ages. He was active as a poet, scholar and possibly composer, as he is usually credited with an important collection of early sequences in Liber hymnorum. Notker wrote Vita Sancti Galli and is commonly accepted to be the "Monk of Saint Gall" (Monachus Sangallensis) who wrote Gesta Karoli (the "deeds of Charlemagne").He was contemporary with the fellow monks Tuotilo and Ratpert.

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 what would become much later (in 1803) the 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.

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". He died in 912. He was beatified in 1512.