At about the same time that Gerbert d'Aurillac, the future Pope Sylvester II, was working through Boethius's Consolatio with the young emperor Otto III, Notker III was laboring over the same text across the Alps in Saint Gall, providing his monastic pupils with a medieval student's translation of and commentary on this seminal text from classical literature. This form of translation-commentary-exegesis for students was his life's work and makes him exemplary of a certain significant type of intellectual life in the European Middle Ages.

Notker is called "the Third" to distinguish him from his prior namesakes in the monastery of Saint Gall: Notker I Balbulus (the stammerer) or poeta (the poet), famous for his Latin sequences; Notker II medicus or physicus (the physician), also known as piperisgranum (peppercorn) because of his fiery temper; Notker abbas, abbot of Saint Gall (971-975). Notker III was called Labeo by his monastic...