ABSTRACT
The works of Notker of St Gallen (†1022), known variously as Teutonicus (because of his love for German) and Labeo (due to a thick lip?), are the first record of continuous German since the end of the ninth century. In addition to translations of the psalter, the Apostles’ Creed, etc., we have his vernacular versions of De Interpretatione (Aristotle, but from Boethius’s translation), of the first two books of De Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae (Martianus Capella) and of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae and the Categories, – many other works accredited to him have been lost. Boethius had been one of the greatest and most prolific writers of the latter days of the Roman Empire, and his Consolation, written in prison, became one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages. In England it is reputed to have been translated by no less than Alfred the Great, and later by Queen Elizabeth I. Our passage is a translation of a later Latin prologue which – unlike the Hildebrandslied (ch. 4) – accurately portrays the despotic events in Rome around the turn of the fifth century. The Latin original was almost certainly composed in St Gallen, quite possibly by Notker himself. At any rate Notker feels confident enough to cut fast and free with the original (e.g. reducing a long list of Germanic tribes to manáge líute 1.4).
