Notker the Stammerer

(c. 840 - 912)

Notker the Stammerer, monk, musician, poet, and librarian in the St. Gall monastery, was an occasional counselor to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the Fat. He addressed his biography of Charles’ great-grandfather Charlemagne, De Carolo Magno, to his sovereign in the hopes that Charles might preserve his forebear’s disintegrating empire. Notker received his name, according to one account, for being “delicate of body but not of mind, stuttering of tongue but not of intellect.” He was beatified in 1512.