This fella's no relation to Michael the Stammerer, the Byzantine Emperor who eased up on the iconodules. Stammerer is more of a trait than a family name, which is nice for any relatives who may speak more fluently.Ekkehard IV, who wrote biographies of the monks of St. Gall, described Notker this way:
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.Notker was born in Switzerland around 840; eventually he was appointed librarian at his monastery, and for a while he served as Master of Guests. He was a prolific writer -- hymns, religious poems, and a book of anecdotes about Charlemagne all bear his name.
Wikipedia has a lengthy, unattributed but derisive review of Notker's work on Charlemagne:
"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, 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, regardless of historical verisimilitude...
Unreliable sources? Fallacious assertions? Sounds a bit like hagiomajor, so if you're raising you voice to St. Notker today, stammer a good word for me. Thanks.
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