Founding and Organization of Saint Gall
The monastery grew from the hermitage established at the cell of Saint Gall. According to the abbey's own tradition, Waltraf, a Thurgau gentleman and judge, recruited the local Alemannic priest Othmar to establish a more organized monastery on the site. To secure the endowment, Waltraf approached the Frankish leader Charles Martel, who provided financial backing to build the facility.
Othmar unified the monks into a formal community and served as its first abbot. He initially placed the house under the Rule of Saint Columban, the older Irish monastic rule associated with Gall's own background, before the shift to Benedictine observance later in his abbacy.
He also modernized the physical fabric of the monastery, extending Saint Gall's original hermit cell and adopting the Carolingian architectural style of the day.
Adoption of the Benedictine Rule
In 747 Othmar introduced the Rule of Saint Benedict, replacing the earlier Rule of Saint Columban. The change was tied to the abbey's growing ties with the Frankish rulers: after Charles Martel's death his son Pepin the Short continued to support the house, granting it privileges, letters of protection, and an assured income.
The Benedictine Rule adopted under Othmar remained in effect at Saint Gall until the monastery's secularization in 1805.
Charitable Institutions and the School
Othmar established a range of institutions that outlasted him. He founded a hospital and a school, which became the foundation on which the celebrated abbey library, the Stiftsbibliothek, was later built. He also established an almshouse and what is recorded as the first leprosarium in Switzerland.
Care for the poor and the sick was a hallmark of his abbacy, and the St. Gall School founded during his tenure marked the beginning of the abbey's long reputation as a center of learning.
Conflict, Exile, and Death
When the Frankish mayor Carloman renounced his throne in 747, he visited Othmar and gave him a letter of recommendation to his brother Pepin the Short, whom Othmar met in person.
In 759 the counts Warin and Ruodhart sought to seize monastery property. When Othmar resisted, they captured him while he was traveling toward Constance and imprisoned him, first at Bodmann castle and then on Werd Island (Wörth) in Lake Constance, near the Rhine at Stein am Rhein. He died there after about six months of confinement, aged roughly seventy.
Relics and Veneration
Othmar's body was transferred to the Abbey of Saint Gall in 769, ten years after his death. He was canonized in 864 by Solomon I, Bishop of Constance, and solemnly entombed in 867.
His feast is kept on November 16. In art he is depicted holding a wine barrel, a reference to a legend of an inexhaustible barrel that never emptied while his body was being carried across the lake.
