medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Gall (d. ca. 645; in Latin, Gallus) is the principal patron saint of the Benedictine monastery in Switzerland that bears his name (Sankt Gallen) and that according to its tradition was founded early in the eighth century at the very spot where he had lived as an hermit. He has three early Vitae, all of which share a common narrative thread: the fragmentarily preserved Vita vetustissima (BHL 3245), written ca. 770; a much more completely preserved Vita by Wetti of Reichenau (BHL 3246), composed between 816 and 824; and an expanded reworking of the latter by the literarily talented Walafrid Strabo, also a monk of Reichenau (BHL 3247-3249), written in 833/34.
According to these accounts, Gall, an Irishman and an ordained priest, was St. Columban's disciple and accompanied him on his mission to the Continent. When Columban was driven out of both Luxeuil and the Burgundian kingdom Gall traveled with him to the shores of the Bodensee (a.k.a. Lake Constance) and, operating from Arbon in today's Switzerland and from Bregenz in today's Austria, assisted in evangelizing among the Alemanni. When Columban then went south across the Alps to settle at Bobbio Gall was badly ill and stayed behind. Seeking greater solitude, he retired to a cell he had built for himself on the Steinach south of the Bodensee but later resumed his missionary activity in collaboration with a priest at Arbon. Miracles attested to his sanctity. The beast known of these is surely the story of how one night when he was praying in a wood he observed an hungry bear feeding on scraps at his and his companion's campfire. Gall commanded the bear to bring wood for the fire; when the miraculously submissive animal had done so Gall gave it a loaf of bread from his small supply and then ordered it to leave the valley they were in and to live in the surrounding mountains without doing harm either to people or to livestock (Walafrid Strabo, _Vita sancti Galli_, 11. 6-8). Gall died at Arbon; the bishop of Konstanz officiated at his funeral service. Seeming to act on their own, the horses carrying his bier brought him to his cell, where he was interred. Further miracles confirmed Gall's immediate cult. Thus far the Vitae.
Herewith the title page and the opening text page of Walafrid Strabo's _Vita sancti Galli_ in its oldest witness, a manuscript of the last decade of the ninth century (Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 563, pp. 2, 3):
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/csg/0562/2/
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/csg/0562/3/
The same Vita in a later eleventh-century (1072-1076) manuscript also at Sankt Gallen (Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 560, pp. 24, 25):
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/csg/0560/24/
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/csg/0560/25/
Today (16. October) is Gall's principal feast day in the diocese of St. Gallen and his feast day in numerous German, Swiss, and Austrian dioceses. It is also his day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology. His Latin-language homonyms include sainted bishops of Aosta and of Clermont.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Gall, hermit:
a) as portrayed (receives from the bear wood for the fire; feeds the bear) by St. Tuotilo of St. Gallen in a panel of a late ninth-century ivory plaque used to adorn the rear cover of the abbey's so-called _Evangelium longum_ (ca. 895; St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, cod. Sang. 53):
http://blogs.princeton.edu/graphicarts/assets_c/2012/05/ivory3-16905.html
The plaque as a whole (zoomable image):
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/binding/csg/0053/bindingC
The episode of the hungry bear in Walafrid Strabo's _Vita sancti Galli_:
http://tinyurl.com/qjmedbx
b) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Magnus / Mang of Füssen) in a later tenth-century fresco (ca. 980) in the Basilika St. Mang at Füssen (Lkr. Ostallgäu) in Bavaria:
http://stmangbasilicafuessen.bravehost.com/myPictures/Heilige%20Magnus%20fresco.jpg
https://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Magnus-Gallus.jpg
c) as depicted (at right; at left, the monk Luitherus) in an earlier twelfth-century antiphoner for the Mass (ca. 1135; St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, cod. Sang. 375, fol. 235):
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/csg/0375/235
d) as portrayed in relief on a seemingly late twelfth-century bracteate round pfennig from the abbey of St. Gallen:
http://www.cngcoins.com/Coin.aspx?CoinID=150641
e) as depicted in a German-language Life of St. Gall transmitted in a later fifteenth-century collection of German-language saint's Lives (betw. 1451 and 1460; St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, cod. Sang. 602, p. 33, 44):
1) being rowed along the Bodensee (second from right; second from left: St. Columban):
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/csg/0602/33/
2) receiving from the bear wood for his fire:
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/csg/0602/44/
For other illuminations in the Life of St. Gall in this ms. go to the hotlinks s.v. "Buchschmuck" at:
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/description/csg/0602/
f) as depicted (left margin at top; with the bear) in a hand-colored woodcut in the Beloit College copy of Hartmann Schedel's late fifteenth-century _Weltchronik_ (_Nuremberg Chronicle_; 1493) at fol. CLIIr):
http://www.beloit.edu/nuremberg/book/6th_age/right_page/55%20%28Folio%20CLIIr%29.pdf
g) as depicted (with the bear) by Hans Süss of Kulmbach in an early sixteenth-century drawing (ca. 1510-1515) in the Kupferstichkabinett in Dresden:
http://images.zeno.org/Kunstwerke/I/big/2350147a.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
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