§ 34. THE REFORMATION IN ST. GALL. 125
and Eastern Switzerland. A monastery was founded about 720 by St. Othmar and became a royal abbey exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, and very rich in revenues from landed possessions in Switzerland, Swabia, and Lombardy, as well as in manuscripts of classical and ecclesiastical learning. Church poetry, music, architecture, sculpture, and painting flourished there in the ninth and tenth centuries. Notker Balbulus, a monk of St. Gall (d. c. 912), is the author of the sequences or hymns in rhythmicpJ prose (^prosce}, and credited with the mournful meditation on death Q'' Media vita in morte sumus''^')^ which is still in use, but of later and uncertain origin. With the increasing wealth of the abbey the discipline declined and worldliness set in. The missionary and literary zeal died out. The bishop of Constance was jealous of the independence and powers of the abbot. The city of St. Gall grew in prosperity and longed for emancipation from monastic control. The clergy needed as much reformation as the monks. Many of them lived in open concubinage, and few were able to make a sermon. The high festivals were profaned by scurrilous popular amusements. The sale of indulgences was carried on with impunity.
The Reformation was introduced in the city and district of St. Gall by Joachim von Watt, a layman (1484-1551), and John Kessler, a minister (1502-1574). The co-operation of the laity and clergy is congenial to the spirit of Protestantism which emancipated the Church from hierarchical control.
Joachim von Watt, better known by his Latin name Vadianus, excelled in his day as a humanist, poet, historian, physician, statesman, and reformer. He was descended from an old noble family, the son of a wealthy merchant, and studied the humanities in the University of Vienna (1502), ^
1 He arrived at Vienna in the autumn of 1502, shortly after Zwingli had left the University. See Stiihelin, I.e., who refers for confirmation to Egli, Aschbach, and Horawitz. The usual opinion is that Vadian and Zwingli (and Glareanus) studied together and formed their friendship at Vienna. So also Pressel, I.e., p. 11.
126 THE SWISS REFORMATION.
wliich was then at the height of its prosperity under the teaching of Celtes and Cuspinian, tAvo famous humanists and Latin poets. He acquired also a good knowledge of philosophy, theology, law, and medicine. After travelling through Poland, Hungary, and Italy, he returned to Vienna and taught classical literature and rhetoric. He was crowned poet and orator by Maximilian (March 12, 1514), and elected rector of the University in 1516. He published several classical authors and Latin poems, orations, and essays. He stood in friendly correspondence with Reuchlin, Hutten, Hesse, Erasmus, and other leaders of the new learning, and especially also with Zwingli.^
In 1518 Watt returned to St. Gall and practised as physician till his death, but took at the same time an active part in all 23ublic affairs of Church and State. He was repeatedly elected burgomaster. He was a faithful co-worker of Zwingli in the cause of reform. Zwingli called him " a physician of body and soul of the city of St. Gall and the whole confederacy," and said, ''I know no Swiss that equals him." Calvin and Beza recognized in him " a man of rare piety and equally rare learning." He called evangelical ministers and teachers to St. Gall. He took a leading part in the religious disputations at Ziirich (1523-1525), and presided over the disputation at Berne (1528).
St. Gall was the first city to follow the example of Ziirich under his lead. The images were removed from the churches and publicly burnt in 1526 and 1528 ; only the organ and the bones of St. Othmar (the iirst abbot) and Notker were saved. An evangelical church order was introduced in 1527. At the same time the Anabaptists endangered the Reformation by strange excesses of fanaticism. Watt had no serious objection to their doctrines, and was a friend and brother-in-
1 His published correspondence with Zwingli begins with a letter from Vienna, April 9, 1511, and embraces four letters of Vadian, and thirty-eight letters of Zwingli, iu Zwingli's Opera, vols. VII. and VIII.