STRABUS AS ABBOT 193 
who was elected in 842 at the age of 35 Abbot of Reichenau, 
wrote in that year or shortly after a poem on plants, his Hortu/us,* 
in 444 Latin hexameters, termed by its discoverer a poem of 
“elegantia delectabilis.”’ 
Some claim that Strabus, after studies at Reichenau and 
Fulda, was for a time at St. Gall, on the Swiss side of Lake Con- 
stance, and that he was deacon (fide Schottgen) and finally 
abbot (fide Trithemius) of its ancient abbey ; founded in the 6th 
century as result of the teachings there of the Irish monk St. 
Gall, and continuing until 1805.{—-During some period previous to 
842 Strabus was directing instruction at Reichenau and with such 
success that he was made its abbot, 842, when but 35. Her- 
mannus Contractus or Herimannus Augiensis, monk at Reichenau, 
1043-1054, says of him in his chronicle merely that he was 12th 
abbot, and for 7 years. Goldast in his collection of “ Alamannic 
writers’’ cites a MS. as saying “ Walafrid had by reason of his 
learned studies so neglected the management of the business of 
the cloister that he was compelled to resign his office as abbot, 
and was expelled from the cloister.” If this was true, then, as the 
“Histoire literaire de la France” remarks, cited with approba- 
tion by Meyer, 3: 424, Strabus must have been later made Abbot 
again, for he was abbot in 849, when his sovereign, King Louis 
best edited by Choulant, Leipsic, 1832, and by Reuss, Wiirtzburg, 1834. 
} Plants around St. Gall at a little later period are said to have occasioned one 
of the more celebrated among the Latin hymns of the middle ages,—written by the 
learned Notker Balbulus, 840 ?-912, monk of St. Gall, reformer of ¢ urch music and 
author of its ‘*sequences,’’ Of his well-known antiphonal beginning 
Media vitae 
: In morte sumus, 
Prof. F. A. March remarks: ‘ This world-famous hymn is said to have been com- 
while watching the samphire-gatherers on the precipices around St. Gall ”’ 
(Latin Hymns, 205. N. Y., 1875). This ‘* Notker Vetustior » is claimed by March 
to have been the first to use for the Virgin Mary the popular name Maris Stella, which 
$0 occurs in the 4th line of his hymn De Nativitate Domint. Some, however, have 
claimed an origin for the name as early as the 4th century, ascribing to that date the 
@nonymous hymn beginning 
Ave maris stella, 
Dei mater alma. 
This Notker whose thoughts were so stirred by ‘‘ those who gather samphire— 
fests trade,’’ is to be distinguished from a slightly later monk of St. Gall, Notker 
beo, who died 1022, whose translations from the Psalms and from Latin and Greek 
authors form early monuments of the Old High German. 
