That which I could I have done, and what the Lord gave me.”
One of his latest bequests was that of his books, which he devised, like a true scholar, partly to his old abbey of Fulda and partly to the monastery of St. Alban at Mainz.
John Trithemius eulogizes him in words which may, perhaps, be transferred into our pages from their original Latin as a specimen of the praise which Rabanus has always received—praise that is indeed worthy of the man who wrote the Veni, Creator.
“Rabanus was first among the Germans; a scholar universally erudite; profound in science; eloquent and strong in discourse; in life and conversation he shone as most learned, religious, and holy; he was always a prelate dignified, affable, and acceptable before God.”
This same Trithemius gives us a little notion of the bishop’s appearance. In body, he says that he was tolerably robust; of a sanguine, bilious temperament; rather fleshly in person than inclined to meagreness (macilentus); with a “courageous and great” head; and of a well-proportioned figure.
Of the other writings of Rabanus it is sufficient for us to name his compendium of the grammar of Priscian; his great work upon The Universe; his treatise upon the Praises of the Holy Cross, and his elaborate commentaries upon the various books of the Bible. He also prepared homilies and sundry compositions relative to ecclesiastical matters. In the Patrologia of Migne it requires six closely-printed volumes to cover his contributions to sacred literature. Especially we have occasion to note his theological writings, as it is in these that his spiritual character is most apparent.
His works mostly are dead enough to modern interest, but not all. German philology honors in him a great churchman who shared Charles the Great’s respect for German speech and culture, and at whose feet Otto of Weissenburg, the poet of the Krist, sat. German pedagogics recognizes in him the first Praeceptor Germaniae, who transplanted to Fulda the generous plans of education which Charles conceived, and which Alcuin executed at Tours. German philosophy recognizes in him the first forerunner of the great series of her metaphysicians. But to us he is Rabanus the poet, who acquired the art of verse under Alcuin, who used it at times to little purpose as in his De Laudibus Sanctae Crucis, but who in a happy hour wrote the Veni, Creator Spiritus.
CHAPTER XIII.
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.