NOTKER OF ST. GALL, CALLED BALBULUS.
In the life of Notker, written by Ekkehard (Eckhardt) the Younger, who
was Dean of St. Gall in 1220, we have a perfect mine of garrulous gossip
and of chattering, pleasant romance. It has been called “one of the most
delightful of mediaeval memoirs;” though we are very little disposed to
accept a large share of it as solid fact. There is in it much confusion,
both of dates and names. From one of its stories came the designation of
Charles the Great (“the Emperor Charles”) as the author of the _Veni
Creator_, a point which we have treated more fully in the chapter upon
Rabanus Maurus. The copyist is mainly accountable for these blunders,
some of which are so grossly anachronistic as to be at once corrected by
their reader; and others are so puerile that no one can easily be
deceived.
Since it is to Notker that we owe the “sequence” in its full
development, it may be as well for us to let Ekkehard sketch his
character at full length. The biography is in one of the April volumes
of the _Acta Sanctorum_ of the Bollandist Fathers—a great white-covered
folio which displays the immense research of its editors. For those who
are less inclined to the Latin language in its monkish form, there is
the admirable abridgment by Baring-Gould, known as the _Lives of the
Saints_—a compilation which must be always distinguished from the work
of the same title by Alban Butler. From these sources a great deal of
truth and falsehood, fact and fiction, real record and unreal romance,
have flowed forth upon the world. We cannot but speak reverently and
kindly of such noble endeavors as those of Dr. Neale, but here, at the
very outset, it must be understood that he has been altogether too much
swayed by peculiar opinions for his ideas upon sequences—and upon Notker
also—to have the weight of absolute authority.
Notker himself is to be discriminated from another Notker of the same
religious house of St. Gall, who is generally known as “the Physician.”
This one is Balbulus, or “the Stammerer,” who is sometimes called
“Vetustior,” the Elder, to distinguish him from his nephew, Notkerus
Junior. He came, Ekkehard asserts, of noble and even royal parentage,
being probably born about the year 850. At an early age he entered the
monastery of St. Gall, in Switzerland, which had been founded by Gallus,
the Irish saint, a disciple of Columbanus, in the seventh century. This
celebrated man died, A.D. 640, at the age of ninety-five, and his life
was written by Walafrid Strabo in two books; the martyrology recording
his death upon October 16th. St. Gall itself is now a town of some
fifteen thousand inhabitants, and the capital of the canton to which it
has given its own name. But the abbey was suppressed in 1805, though the
library, filled with valuable manuscripts, still remains. From these
ancient parchments P. Gall Morel, Librarian at Einsiedeln, has
resuscitated many sequences and hymns formerly employed in their
services.
The Sangallensian poets are not, however, very numerous. Hartmann was
probably the earliest composer of a “sequence”—a style of sacred poem
which we shall consider presently. Then came Notker Balbulus, who has
the greater renown. Tutilo and Ratpert and Walafrid Strabo complete the
list. St. Gall was for years a noted centre of learning. It is well
situated, and from its towers the waters of the Boden-See (from which it
is distant but a few miles) can be readily discerned.
Here, then, Notker began his religious life. He had probably seen the
light in the green and fertile Thurgau not far away from St. Gall. And
his talents were soon so noticeable that he rapidly advanced in the
esteem of his associates. Meanwhile—for the Irish and Scottish monks
made this a thoroughfare on their pilgrimages to Rome—there came along
an Irish bishop named Mark, whose nephew, Maengal, strongly aroused the
admiration of Notker. Maengal’s music especially affected him, and he
devoutly prayed God to let the Irishman tarry with them at St. Gall.
This indeed happened, and Maengal, rechristened Marcellus, remained in
Switzerland.
This good tutor now undertook the musical training of Notker, Ratpert,
and Tutilo. And from this beginning arose the choral school of St. Gall.
Ekkehard’s history of it is most suggestive. It was originally begun, he
says, for the study of the Gregorian tones, but these Swiss people had
by degrees lost the sweetness of the old Pope’s music. And he borrows
the language of John the Deacon, in his life of Gregory, to satirize the
“thundering voices” with which such “Alpine bodies” failed to secure the
proper modulation. I borrow Baring-Gould’s idiomatic rendering of this
significant passage. It runs as follows:
“The barbarous hugeness of those tippling throats, when endeavoring to
utter a soft song full of inflections and diphthongs, makes a great
roar, as though carts were tumbling down steps headlong; and so, instead
of soothing the minds of those who listen, it agitates and exasperates
them beyond endurance.”
Such was the character of church music when the song school of St. Gall
was started. The monks had already been so fortunate as to secure one of
the two Gregorian antiphonaries sent by Pope Adrian to the Emperor
Charles the Great. The occurrence was curious enough to be chronicled,
and the story merits our own repetition. Metz had been the German music
centre, but when the French music clashed with that which was considered
the correct and Gregorian method, Charles again solicited from the Pope
two priests who were thorough musicians, and should put Metz and her
school above criticism. These two men, by name Peter and Romanus, set
out thereupon, but took a heavy cold between them at Lago Maggiore
(_aere Romanis contrario quaterentur_). Peter soon recovered, but
Romanus advanced from a mere cold into an actual fever, and remained at
St. Gall with one of the antiphonaries, while the disgusted Peter, who
claimed both copies, was forced to proceed alone and with a single
manuscript to Metz.
St. Gall was sufficiently attractive to Romanus for him to make no
effort to leave it when he grew convalescent. And these compositions and
melodies of his were the foundation upon which, in later years, Notker
and Hartmann and the others built their sequences. That which Maengal
now effected was the real beginning of that system of music which is so
elaborately treated by Dr. Neale in his preface to the second volume of
Daniel’s _Thesaurus_. Perhaps more has been made of it there than it
really deserves. It is certainly too far out of the line of this inquiry
of ours for us to discuss the point technically. One of the best
definitions of the sequence is, however, that of Mabillon, who calls
such compositions “rhythmical prayers” (_rythmicae preces_).
Notker became easily—so Ekkehard asserts—the finest musician about the
abbey. He was also a bright and rather witty man. When Augustine was
asked what God was doing before He created the world, he replied that He
“was building hell for such vain and frivolous spirits” as that of his
questioner. The chaplain of Charles the Fat put a similar inquiry to
Notker, and got quite as brief a retort. He asked, “What is God doing
now?” And Notker stammered out, “Just what He has always done and always
will do; He is putting down the proud and exalting the humble!”
There is another of these queer anecdotes which will serve to show that
the old monks were by no means destitute of a sense of humor. A certain
young Salomon, son of the Count of Ramsweg, was a student of the abbey
school, and something of a snob among his fellow-scholars. Notker,
Ratpert, Tutilo and Hartmann were of as good family as he, and they did
not enjoy his behavior. Finally, through favoritism, Salomon came to be
abbot of six monasteries and Bishop of Constance in addition. But in
spite of these dignities he had a singular predilection for the Abbey of
St Gall, and was accustomed to put on a surplice and go about the place
attending the offices like a regular monk—which, by the way, he had no
right to do. His old friends found this out, and raised so much of a
stir about it that he ceased from the practice. But at night he still
persisted in entering the abbey and aiding in the services.
Rudiger, one of the confederates, was therefore set to watch for the
coming of the intruding bishop, and when Salomon slipped along toward
the church in the darkness the watcher suddenly thrust a light in his
face and saw who it was. Then this valiant Rudiger swore the largest
oath permitted in those sacred precincts, for he asseverated “by St.
Gall” that no stranger in their conventual habit should be around the
cloisters at night. Salomon offered endless apologies, and promised to
secure permission from the abbot before he wore the surplice again. And
he even turned his discomfiture into a partial victory by begging
Rudiger to present this request in his behalf. The petition, so voiced,
came duly before the “senate” of that monkish republic, which happened,
unfortunately for the avaricious and rapacious Salomon, to include his
four opposers—“Hartmann, who composed the melody to the _Sanctus humili
prece_; Notker the Stammerer, who made _Sequences_; Ratpert, who wrote
_Ardua spes mundi_, and Tutilo, who was the author of _Hodie
cantandus_.” These men finally allowed him to come in as usual, provided
he would entirely demit his canon’s raiment, and be nothing but a
Benedictine monk while within the walls.
Somehow Salomon conceded even this, and one day brought a splendid
gift—a gold box encrusted with jewels and containing relics—which he
offered to the abbey. All this looked in the direction that the monks
feared; and they therefore rejected his present with some scorn. But it
did not take long to lift Salomon the Simonist to the Abbacy of
Reichenau, and then Archbishop Sfortto contrived at length to secure the
wealthy St. Gall for his favorite. Thus Salomon, the detested, became,
in spite of all opposition, the abbot of that celebrated cloister.
But St. Gall itself had always prospered, apparently as the sun does
according to the theories of some astronomers, for it had been
continually receiving cometary accessions that dropped into it
unexpectedly. One such was an antiphonary, which, on the principle that
“to him that hath shall be given,” fell into the hands of these musical
monks through the burning of the Abbey of Jumieges in 851. This was the
true origin of the “sequence.” It solved the problem of Notker in a
novel manner when he finally examined it, for he had been puzzled at the
immense prolongation of the final syllable _ia_ in the _Alleluia_, which
was sung to cover the retreat of the deacon as he ascended to the
rood-loft to chant the Gospel. This _Alleluia_ came between the Epistle
and the Gospel, and as the deacon had some space to traverse, the _ia_
was nearly interminable; for even a very few seconds became on such an
occasion a most perceptible and wearisome interval of time.
This Jumieges antiphonary, in which words were fitted to the Gregorian
tones, suggested another treatment of the difficulty. Notker
consequently composed the _Laudes Deo concinat_, and afterward the
_Coluber Adae male suasor_. Iso, his master, approved of them, and
Maengal afterward gave him considerable help. The “sequence” in its
standard form had a “note to each syllable,” as in modern church music.
And this was the beginning of that Book of Sequences perfected by him in
887, and which has gained a merited prominence for the name of Notker
Balbulus.
Ekkehard tells certain legends (which may or may not be trustworthy)
regarding the suggestion whence some of these sprung. The droning
rotation of a slow mill-wheel gave rise, he says, to the sequence
_Sancti Spiritus adsit nobis gratia_; and this is far more credible than
the additional information that Notker sent it to “the Emperor” Charles
and got back the famous _Veni Creator Spiritus_—a story which Mabillon
utterly confutes. This Emperor was certainly _not_ Charles the Great—who
was long ago dead—and it _might_ have been Charles “the Bald” or Charles
“the Fat” (the usurper), or Charles “the Simple,” but there seems an
antecedent improbability that any such nickname could belong to the
grave and great poet of that splendid hymn. And, indeed, we are now
positive that it is the composition of Rabanus Maurus, Bishop of Mayence
(Mainz), who died in 856.
There is probably some show of reason in the idea that the groaning
machinery of a mill should have helped to originate the extended notes
of the sequence. The picturesqueness of the story is really its best
claim to our notice. I well remember a mill by which I used often to
pause in the stillness of night, listening to the wailing protracted
cadences of the huge wheel which slowly turned in its bed as the buckets
successively filled from the shut, but leaky gates. Hearing this, and
comparing it with the “sequence” of the Catholic service, or with the
long-drawn tones of a German choral, it is impossible not to be struck
by the resemblance.
Then there is another story—indeed, there are several in the Latin which
could scarcely be inserted here—but there is certainly one other which
both Baring-Gould and Maitland have had sufficient geniality to extract.
It refers to the manner in which Notker, Ratpert, and Tutilo—“the three
inseparables”—attended to the eavesdropping of one of Abbot Salomon’s
spies. This spy was Sindolf, the _refectorarius_, or steward, a
sour-visaged, crab-appleish kind of man, who was never so happy as when
he had an evil speech to retail. He particularly delighted in fretting
the temper of the abbot with reference to these poets and musicians, but
they suspected his design and “set a watch because of him.”
One evening after “lauds” the three were in the “writing-room”
(_scriptorium_) where the manuscripts were prepared and kept, busy with
their conversation and having thereto the permission of the prior.
Sindolf sniffed scandal in the air, and flattened his ear against the
opaque glass, where a convenient crack suffered him to listen to their
words. It was night, and Tutilo, a shrewd, lively fellow (_homo
pervicax_), was glad enough to get this occasion against the slinking
traitor. In the _Acta Sanctorum_, and again in Mabillon, copied into the
one hundred and thirty-first volume of Migne, we have old Ekkehard’s
grim report of this monkish fun.
“There he is with his ear to the glass,” cried Tutilo. “Do you, Notker,
because you are a timid little chap (_timidulus_), go away into the
church. But Ratpert, my friend, take down the whip that hangs in the
chimney corner and run out-doors. And then comfort my heart (_cor meum
confortare_) by laying on to him with all your might (_esto robustus_).
For I, when you get close enough, will throw open the window in a hurry,
catch him by the hair and hang on with a will” (_ad me pertractum
violenter tenebo_). Off went the timorous Notker; out slipped the
cheerful Ratpert; open went the window, and the vigorous Tutilo clutched
Sindolf by ears and hair together! Then Ratpert rained on the lashes (_a
dorso ingrandinat_), and Sindolf twisted and howled and kicked, and
lights began to fly around, and the brethren came running. But Tutilo
held on and called for a light and shouted that he had caught the devil;
while Ratpert vanished into the night and Notker had entirely
disappeared in the church. “Where are Notker and Ratpert?” was the first
question. “Oh, they smelled the devil and ran away to ask succor from
heaven,” said Tutilo. “And here was I, left to do the best I could with
this thing that walks in darkness. And I believe an angel has been sent
to chastise him in the rear!”
The sneaky Sindolf was completely abashed, but his temper did not
improve under the chastisement. Even Salomon, his patron, laughed at him
along with the others, which made the matter worse. So one day, finding
a beautiful copy of the Canonical Epistles in Greek which Liutward,
Bishop of Vercelli, had sent as a present to Notker, what does the
malicious wretch do but cut it to pieces with his knife! Ekkehard adds
that the mutilated copy could still be seen in the library of St. Gall.
These two worthies, Ratpert and Tutilo, heartily deserve the place which
Ekkehard accords them in his life of Notker. Ratpert walked usually
between Notker and Tutilo; a very punctual, studious man who “wore out
two pairs of shoes in the year;” a man who seldom left the abbey walls,
and who regarded “expeditions” as being to the full “as dangerous as
kisses;” a negligent fellow about the offices and masses, claiming that
he taught them often enough to his pupils; and finally, a composer of
good litanies; dying October 25th, A.D. 900.
Tutilo was a capital companion; genial and ingenious; capable of music
on all sorts of pipes and fiddles; who told a good story and made many a
good joke; active and agile in his figure, and withal a fine carver,
painter, and goldsmith. Some of his ivory carving still exists in the
town library of St. Gall—so one historian records in a foot-note—and he
was evidently a most skilful musician, whose hymn tunes, composed on the
_rota_, or small harp (the minstrel’s instrument in those days), were
always acceptable. He wrote _Hodie cantandus_, _Omnium virtutum gemmis_,
and _Viri Galilaei_. This last he sent to “King Charles,” who himself
composed a tune to which Tutilo set words called _Quoniam Dominus_. His
royal patron liked him well. “Curse the man,” he said one day, “he is
altogether too good a fellow to be a monk!” Ekkehard adds to this list
of compositions the sequence _Gaudete et cantate_ as a specimen of
Tutilo’s ability in a slightly different direction of music, declaring
that “any one who understands music” will notice and appreciate the
distinction.
Hartmann was abbot after Salomon; a most learned man, and one who
perhaps contributed more to the development of the “sequence” than we
are now able to prove.
Of Notker it is only fair to say that he gave to himself the name
_Balbus_, or Stammerer, which was changed, owing apparently to his small
stature, into the diminutive, _Balbulus_. When Innocent III. asked
Uadalric, then Abbot of St. Gall, what rank Notker had held in the
convent, the abbot replied that he was only “a simple monk,” but was
born of noble parents and was thoroughly holy and well educated. On
which the Pope declared that they were wretched and wicked people
(_nequissimi_), and would suffer for it (_infelices eritis_) if they did
not celebrate the festival of this man who had been “so full of the Holy
Spirit.” Julius II. commanded Hugo, Bishop of Constance, to inquire into
the matter. The result established him as a beatified confessor, and so
distinguished him by the prefix “Blessed” from Notker “the Abbot,” who
was his nephew, and died 973; Notker “the Physician,” who died 1033;
Notker “of Liege,” who died 1007, and Notker “Labeo,” who died 1022. B.
Notker Balbulus himself died in 912. Salomon, who was then his abbot,
died in 919, and in 921 Hartmann succeeded to the dignity.
It would not be difficult to add to this account several superstitious
stories; how Notker broke his staff over a dog-devil which went howling
through the church; how he had some difficulty with another demon who
intermeddled with pen and ink; how he severely handled a flagitious
monk; and, generally, how he proved to be a moderate worker of miracles
and a pleasant colleague to the other cenobites.
But we turn with a peculiar interest to that little sequence which has
made his name immortal. This _Media vita in morte sumus_ is the one
which meets us in the Burial Service of the Protestant Episcopal Church:
“In the midst of life we are in death:
Of whom may we seek for succor
But of thee, O Lord,
Who for our sins art justly displeased?”
It is there found in connection with a passage from the Book of Job, and
is followed by the _Sancte Deus; Sancte fortis; Sancte et misericors
Salvator, Amarae morti ne tradas nos_; which is in our translation,
“Yet, O Lord most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful
Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death.” All
that Notker originally composed is that which is first mentioned above.
The rest came about as we shall presently see.
The Rev. F. Proctor, in his _History of the Book of Common Prayer_,
states that this brief sequence—of which he does not appear to know the
origin—“was formed from an antiphon which was sung at Compline during a
part of Lent.” There is also a singular misapprehension by which the
“samphire gatherers” hanging over the cliffs of England at their
“dreadful trade” were credited with the suggestion. It was formerly
supposed that Notker watched them during their dangerous toil, and so,
by another equally strange inadvertence, the fact was taken as a proof
that he must have been himself a native or resident of Britain. This,
like the other legend of the twenty-year debate upon sequences, proves
on inquiry to have no foundation in fact. The story itself is a
sufficient explanation without any coloring whatever. It reveals to us
the poetic spirit of the devout man who beheld his fellow-creatures
poised between life and death, and wrote this short and exquisite
meditation thereon.
“The holy Notker,” says Canisius, “made the ‘prose’ of the following
lament when the bridge [over the chasm] at Martinstobel was being
constructed in a precipitous and most dangerous place. But who added the
‘verses’ I do not know. I have quoted it from a most ancient codex,
where it is set to modern notes.” He then proceeds to give it in the
ordinary form. It is, as he says, a _prose_, and must be distinguished
from _verses_ of regular metre:
“Media vita in morte sumus, quem quaerimus adjutorem, nisi te, Domine,
qui pro peccatis nostris juste irasceris.”
Thus far Notker. Then occur the “verses” in three stanzas:
“Ah homo, perpende fragilis,
Mortalis, et instabilis,
Quod vitare non poteris
Mortem, quocunque ieris.
Aufert te, saepissime,
Dum vivis libentissime.
Sancte deus.
“Vae calamitas inediae,
Vermis fremit invidiae,
Dum audit flentem animam
Mortalis esse utinam!
Nec Christi fati gladius,
Transiret, et non alius,
Sancte fortis.
“Heu nil valet nobilitas
Neque sedis sublimitas,
Nil generis potentia,
Nil rerum affluentia,
Plus pura conscientia
Valet mundi scientia.
Sancte et misericors Salvator,
Amarae morti ne tradas nos.”
It is perfectly plain, then, that this “third sequence”—the _Media vita_
being the second—is derived from the “verses” whose authorship Canisius
cannot discover, and the date of which cannot be far from the fourteenth
century.
But when we imagine the good monk watching the workmen from the brink of
the Goldach, which hurries down through St. Gall toward the Boden-See,
we can bring to mind the whole picture. The present bridge is one
hundred and sixteen feet long and fully one hundred in height from the
swift little stream. It is of wood, and was constructed in 1468. Here,
dizzily balancing in mid-air, tradition says that a man, even as Notker
gazed, lost his footing and plunged into the abyss. The eternities came
together! A spark from the infinite kindled within the poet’s soul.
Heaven from on high beheld this single life suddenly hurled to ruin.
Earth from beneath reached up and seized upon the thing of earth. And
thus it was with us every moment! In the midst of life we were in death,
and from none could we seek for help save from God alone—that God,
displeased at sinners, who is the sinner’s only hope!
Standing once before the graves at Gettysburg, the tall gaunt figure of
Abraham Lincoln paused upon such an eternal edge. His soul took in at
one sweep the heroic past and the historic future. And those words which
came, so men assure us, almost without premeditation from his lips are
the noblest utterance of our time. That compact, terse, brief expression
is the essence of national strength. The phrases are vivid with a
supernatural brightness: “Government of the people, for the people, by
the people must not perish from the earth.” It was so with Notker; and
now, wherever that beautiful service is uttered above the dead, the
forgotten monk of St. Gall speaks with a voice which touches unaltering
humanity, and utters that grave, great thought, preciously protected in
its small casket of language, that death is beneath and God is above,
and that all our hope must come from Him!