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About Us |
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 History
of our Patron Saint Gall
An Irishman by birth, he was one
of the twelve disciples who accompanied St. Columbanus to Gaul, and
established themselves with him at Luxeuil. Gall again followed his magister,
in 610, on his voyage on the Rhine to Bregenz; but he separated from him in
612, when Columbanus left for Italy; and he remained in Swabia, where, with
several companions, he led the life of a hermit, in a desert to the west of
Bregenz, near the source of the river Steinach. There, after his death, was
erected an "ecelesia Sancti Galluni" governed by a "presbyter et pastor".
Before the middle of the eighth century this church became a real monastery,
the first abbot of which was St. Otmar. The monastery was the property of
the
Diocese of Constance, and it was only in
818 that it obtained from the Emperor Louis the Pious the right to be
numbered among the royal monasteries. and to enjoy the privilege of
immunity. At last, in 854, it was freed from all obligation whatever towards
the
See of Constance, and henceforth was
attached only by ties of canonical dependence. Called
"Abbey of St. Gall", not from the name of
its founder and first abbot, but of the saint who had lived in this place
and whose
relics were honoured there, the monastery
played an illustrious part in history for more than a thousand years.
Apart from this authentic history,
there exists another version or tradition furnished by the Lives of St.
Gall, the most ancient of which does not antedate the end of the eighth
century. A portion of the incidents related in these Lives is perhaps true;
but another part is certainly legendary, and in formal contradiction to the
most ancient charters of the abbey itself. According to these biographies,
Gall was ordained a priest in Ireland before his departure for the
Continent, therefore before 590. Having reached Bregenz with Columbanus, he
laboured in the country as a missionary, and actively combated the pagan
superstitions. Prevented by illness from following Columbanus to Italy, he
was placed under
interdict by the displeased Columbanus, and
in consequence could not celebrate Mass until several years later, after the
death of his old master. Gall delivered from the demon by which she was
possessed Fridiburga, the daughter of Cunzo and the betrothed of Sigebert,
King of the Franks; the latter, through gratitude, granted to the saint an
estate near Arbon, which belonged to the royal treasury, that he might found
a monastery there. Naturally the monastery was exempt from all dependence on
the Bishop of
Constance; moreover, Gall twice refused the
episcopal see of that city, which was offered to him, and having been
instrumental in securing the election of a secular cleric, the
deacon John, the latter and his successors
placed themselves in every way at the service of the abbey. Gall also
declined the abbatial dignity of Luxeuil, which was offered him by the monks
of the monastery after the death of St. Eustace. Shortly afterwards he died,
at the age of ninety-five, at Arbon, during a visit; but his body was
brought back to the monastery, and
God revealed the sanctity of his servant by
numerous
miracles. His feast is celebrated on 16
October, the day ascribed to him in some very ancient martyrologies, while
Adon, it is not known for what reason, makes it occur on 20 February. The
saint is ordinarily represented with a bear; for a legend, recorded in the
Lives, relates that one night, at the command of the saint, one of these
animals brought wood to feed the fire which Gall and his companions had
kindled in the desert.
The most ancient Life, of which
only fragments have been discovered till the present date, but otherwise
very important, has been remodeled and put in the better style of the ninth
century by two monks of Reichenau: in 816-24 by the celebrated Wettinus, and
about 833-34 by Walafrid Strabo, who also revised a book of the
miracles of the saint, written somewhat
earlier by Gozbert the Younger, monk of St. Gall. In 850 an anonymous monk
of the same abbey wrote, in verse, a Life which he published under the name
of Walafrid; and others after him further celebrated the holy patron in
prose and verse.
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