Notker von Zwiefalten
Notker von Zwiefalten was an early medieval German lyric poet and theological writer, whose life remains somewhat obscure due to the limited historical records available. He is first noted in 1065 when he joined the Benedictine cloister at Einsiedeln and later became the second abbot of the Zwiefalten monastery, which was founded around 1080. His tenure as abbot coincided with significant ecclesiastical and political tensions during the Investiture Controversy, a period marked by conflict between the Holy Roman Emperor and the papacy over control of church appointments. Notker's literary contributions include the Lenten verse sermon “Memento mori,” which is recognized as the oldest surviving German penitential sermon in rhymed verse. This work was composed around 1070 for a lay audience and emphasizes strict adherence to Christian values in the context of the ecclesiastical reforms advocated by influential figures like William of Hirsau. Although the manuscript containing his text is incomplete, Notker’s authorship is widely accepted based on linguistic and geographic evidence. He served as abbot until his death in March 1095, leaving a legacy intertwined with the spiritual and political challenges of his time.
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Subject Terms
Notker von Zwiefalten
Writer
- Born: Early 1000’s
- Died: March 6, 1095
Biography
The birthdate of early medieval German lyric poet and theological writer Notker (sometimes Noker or Noggerus) von Zwiefalten is unknown, and the details of his biography are scant. The first record of him is in 1065, when he joined the Benedictine cloister at Einsiedeln, and he appeared twice in the history of the order—when he accompanied the monks to found the reformist cloister at Hirsau and then again when he became the second abbot at the Zwiefalten monastery in the present-day province of Baden-Württemberg, founded around 1080 by the Hirsau clerics.
As a monk at Hirsau, von Zwiefalten would have been influenced by the reformist ideas of William of Hirsau, who supported the papacy during the Investiture Controversy, when the Holy Roman Emperor attempted to assert control over ecclesiastical appointments. Germany became embroiled in a fifty-year-long civil war as a result of the controversy, with its abbots becoming increasingly powerful. William of Hirsau became abbot in 1069, winning control of the abbey from its lay leader Count Adalbert II of Calw and assuming the right for the abbey to appoint and invest its own leaders. Influenced by the contemporary Cluniac reforms, William advocated strict monastic piety implemented through an elaborate network of rules under strict supervision and with harsh punishments. The ascetic reformist order was immensely popular with both the laity and new monks, and during the latter quarter of the eleventh century, the Hirsau monks not only expanded into satellite abbeys such as the one at Zwiefalten but also built at Hirsau itself the largest monastic complex in medieval Germany.
Abbot Notker von Zwiefalten is remembered through a Lenten verse sermon composed around 1070, named Memento mori by its nineteenth century editor K. A. Barack. Written in the lay vernacular and explicitely for a lay audience, the text is the oldest extant German penitential sermon in rhymed verse, and in its calls for pious adherence to strict Christian principles is pronouncedly a document of the Investiture conflict. The work exists only in incomplete form, appended to the back of a parchment manuscript of the Moralia in Job of Gregory the Great, held in the Monastery of Ochsenhausen, near Zwiefalten. Notker’s text postdates the Job and was likely appended to the earlier text around 1130, approximately fifty years after its estimated date of composition. Attribution to Notker von Zwiefalten is conjectural, based on the final line of the manuscript—“daz machot all ein Noker”—but his authorship has been widely accepted since a 1935 essay by Marlies Dittrich pointed out geographic and linguistic evidence in favor of Notker being both the poet as well as the scribe of the Ochsenhausen manuscript. Notker was abbot at Zwiefalten from around 1090 until the time of his death in March, 1095.