Note 33 — Chapter V · FALL OF THE LOMBARD MONARCHY.

The Monk of St. Gall (Monachus Sangallensis) is by some supposed to be Notker, surnamed Balbulus (the Stammerer), who lived about 840–912. He was famous as a hymn writer and the inventor of that peculiar kind of hymn called “sequence.” The book, whether its author be Notker or a fellow monk, was written about the year 883, and is valuable not only for its anecdotes—some of which are doubtless legendary—but because it gives the popular opinion of Charlemagne that prevailed at the time the book was written, three quarters of a century after the king’s death.