Gottschalk of Orbais, also known as Godescalc, Godescalcus the Saxon, and Gottschalk of Fulda, is one of the saddest figures of early-medieval German culture. He wrote nothing in German, but the small amount of Latin poetry by him that survives is impressive and important.

The son of a Saxon nobleman, Graf (Count) Bern, Gottschalk was dedicated to the monastery at Fulda as a puer oblatus (a boy offered up)--a practice abandoned not long afterward. He seems also to have spent time at the Reichenau, and he knew Walahfrid Strabo. In Fulda he came into conflict with the powerful abbot, Hrabanus Maurus, when he objected to the fact that his monastic vows had been made without his consent and attempted to have them annulled. In 829 he appealed to the Synod of Mainz to free him from his vows and to return to him the patrimony that had been...