author
Balbulus Notker
d. 912
A monk, poet, and musician of the Abbey of Saint Gall, this early medieval writer helped shape the sound and storytelling of the Carolingian world. He is especially remembered for vivid anecdotes about Charlemagne and for sequence hymns that influenced church music for generations.
1 Audiobook
Early Lives of Charlemagne by Eginhard and the Monk of St Gall edited by Prof. A. J. Grant
by Einhard, Balbulus Notker
About the author
Born around 840 and known as Notker Balbulus, or Notker the Stammerer, he spent his life at the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Gall in what is now Switzerland. Medieval sources and modern reference works describe him as a scholar, poet, and composer whose learning grew out of the abbey's rich intellectual life.
He is best known in literature for the Gesta Karoli Magni (The Deeds of Charlemagne), a lively collection of stories about Charlemagne and the emperor's circle. The work is valued less as strict history than as a window into how Charlemagne was remembered in the generations after his death, which gives it a special charm for modern readers.
Notker was also an important figure in medieval sacred music. His Liber hymnorum helped establish the sequence as a major form in Western liturgical song, showing the same mix of imagination, discipline, and devotion that marks his writing.