Notker of Liège, Bl.
NOTKER OF LIÈGE, BL.
Prince bishop of Liège; b. c. 940; d. Liège, April 10, 1008. He came of a noble Swabian family and was a nephew of Emperor Otto I. Although he seems to have been educated at Sankt Gallen, it is unlikely that he was provost there. Made bishop of Liège in 969 and called its "second founder," he directed his energies to strengthening Church discipline, building churches, and improving the schools of his diocese. As a result of his work, the cathedral school of Saint-Lambert, divided into clerical and lay sections, was among the best in the West. He was often in the service of the Emperors Otto II, Otto III, and Henry II; and on one of his four trips to Italy, he accompanied back to Germany the body of otto iii, whose classical notions of the empire he had enthusiastically supported. He built a cathedral in Liège after the model of Aachen, but it was destroyed by fire in 1185. He was buried in St. John's at Liège, but the present relics there are not genuine.
Feast: April 9 or 10.
Bibliography: i. heller, ed., Aegidii Aureaevallensis gesta episcoporum Leodiensium, Monumenta Germaniae Scriptores (Berlin 1825) 25:57–63. Acta Sanctorum April 1:58, 847. u. berliÈre, "Une Biographie de l'évêque Notger au XIIe siècle," Acta Sanctorum 8 (1891) 309–312. g. kurth, Notger de Liège et la civilisation au X e siècle, 2 v. (Brussels 1905).
[w. e. wilkie]