St Gallen, the capital city of the Canton of St Gall, grew up around the Benedictine abbey dedicated to the 7th-c. Irish missionary St Gallus. The abbey was from the 9th c. to the 11th c. an outstanding centre of learning, numbering among its monks such scholars as the Ekkehards and Notkers. In the later Middle Ages the abbots became powerful feudal overlords, and tensions developed between abbey and city, which broke free from ecclesiastical rule in 1454. When, however, some thirty years later, it was proposed to remove the abbey to Rorschach, the inhabitants of St Gall, threatened with the loss of their livelihood, vigorously opposed the move, even demolishing new buildings under construction. The city authorities were condemned in the courts, but the abbey stayed where it was. The most notable personality of St Gall, after the scholars of the 10th c. and 11th c., was Burghermaster Joachim von Watt (latinized as Vadianus), a humanistic scholar who fostered the Reformation in the city. The abbey church (since 1847 cathedral) was rebuilt in baroque style between 1756 and 1765. The abbey was secularized in 1805. The library is famous for both its architectural beauty and its contents, of which the most notable treasure is the MS. B of the Nibelungenlied. St Gall, plays a part in J. V. von Scheffel's historical novel Ekkehard.

The Oxford Companion to German Literature. Copyright © 1976, 1986, 1997, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.