Celtic and Old English Saints 28 March
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* St. Tuathal of Saint-Gall
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St. Tuathal of Saint-Gall
(Tutilo) (Tuathal: pronounced tool)
When St. Gall, the companion of St. Columbanus, died in Switzerland in 640,
a monastery was built over the place of his burial. This became the famous
monastery of St. Gall, one of the most influential monasteries of the Middle
Ages and the center of music, art, and learning throughout that period.
About the middle of the ninth century, returning from a visit to Rome, an
Irishman named Moengul stopped off at the abbey and decided to stay, along
with a number of Irish companions, among them Tuathal, or Tutilo. Moengul
was given charge of the abbey schools and he became the teacher of Tutilo,
Notker, and Radpert, who were distinguished for their reaming and their
artistic skills. Tutilo, in particular, was a universal genius: musician,
poet, painter, sculptor, builder, goldsmith, head of the monastic school,
and composer.
He was part of the abbey at its greatest, and the influence of Gall spread
throughout Europe. The Gregorian chant manuscripts from the monastery of St.
Gall, many of them undoubtedly the work of St. Tutilo, are considered among
the most authentic and were studied carefully when the monks of Solesmes
were restoring the tradition of Gregorian chant to the Catholic Church. The
scribes of St. Gall supplied most of the monasteries of Europe with
manuscript books of Gregorian chant, all of them priceless works of the art
of illumination. Proof of the Irish influence at St. Gall is a large
collection of Irish manuscripts at the abbey dating from the seventh,
eighth, and ninth centuries.
Tutilo was known to be handsome, eloquent, and quick-witted, who brought
something of the Irish love of learning and the arts to St. Gall. He died in
915 at the height of the abbey's influence, remembered as a great teacher, a
dedicated monk, and a competent scholar.
-oOo-
Medieval Sourcebook:
Ekkehard of St. Gall: Three Monks of St. Gall
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/eckehard1.html
The lives of three monks who lived in the abbey of St. Gall at the end of
the ninth century were chronicled by Ekkehard of St. Gall a century later.
The monks are more human and istinctive than the monastic rules seem to
suggest.
I will tell now of Notker, Ratpert, and Tutilo, since they were one heart
and soul, and formed together a sort of trinity in unity Yet, though so
close in heart, in their natures (as it often happens) they were most
diverse. Notker was frail in body, though not in mind, a stammerer in voice
but not in spirit; lofty in divine thoughts, patient in adversity, gentle in
everything, strict in enforcing the discipline of our convent, yet somewhat
timid in sudden and unexpected alarms, except in the assaults of demons,
whom he always withstood manfully. He was most assiduous in illuminating,
reading, and composing; and (that I may embrace all his gifts of holiness
within a brief compass) he was a vessel of the Holy Ghost, as full as any
other of his own time.
But Tutilo was widely different. He was strong and supple in arm and limb,
such a man as Fabius tells us to choose for an athlete; ready of speech,
clear of voice, a delicate carver and painter; musical, with especial skill
on the harp and the flute; for the Abbot gave him a cell wherein he taught
the harp to the sons of noble families around. He was a crafty messenger, to
run far or near; skilled in building and all the kindred arts; he had a
natural gift of ready and forcible expression whether in German or in Latin,
in earnest or in jest; so that the emperor Charles [the Fat] once said,
"Devil take the fellow who made so gifted a man into a monk!" But with all
this he had higher gifts: in choir he was mighty, and in secret prayer he
had the gift of tears; a most excellent composer of poetry and melodies, yet
chaste, as became the disciple of our Master Marcellus, who shut his eyes
against women.
Ratpert, again, was midway between the other two. Master of the Schools from
his youth, a straightforward and kindly teacher, he was somewhat harsh in
discipline, more loth than all the other Brethren to set foot without the
cloister, and wearing but two pairs of shoes in the twelvemonth. He called
it death to go forth, and oftentimes warned Tutilo to take heed to himself
upon his journeys; in the schools he was most assiduous. He oftentimes
omitted the services and the mass, and would say, "We hear good masses when
we teach others to sing them." Though he would say that impunity was the
worst plague of cloister life, yet . he never came to the Chapter-house*
without special summons, since he bore that most heavy burden (as he called
it) of reproving and punishing.
These
