Frutolfus of Michelsberg

Frutolf of Michelsberg lived in Bavaria in the mid-eleventh century and died at Michelsberg on 17 January 1103. Before entering the Benedictine abbey of Michelsberg in Bamberg, he was probably a lay priest. That monastery possessed a notable library, and he drew much of his material from it. Heimo of St James's, Bamberg, declared himself his disciple, and the date of his death is recorded in the Chronicle that he had begun to compile.

He is best understood as a compiler rather than an original author. He gathered texts from the Michelsberg library and, it is presumed, copied out the passages he later incorporated into his works himself. Two autograph manuscripts allow his handwriting to be identified: the Chronicle of the World and the De divinis officiis, the latter made up of passages from Amalarius of Metz, Hrabanus Maurus and the pseudo-Alcuin. His music treatises follow the same method and owe a great deal to Boethius and Berno of Reichenau. His Breviarium, preserved in a single early manuscript from Munich, deals with the origin and names of pitches according to Boethius's Greek terminology, the monochord, the proportions of the consonances, the tetrachords, the modes, the intervals and the names of the notes. The closing chapters take verses from known authors, such as Hermann the Lame and Henry of Augsburg, as well as from anonymous sources.

The treatise is followed by a metrical tonary, an abridged version of a longer one, and several short texts on measuring the monochord, a neume table, the Guidonian hand, and the measurement of organ pipes and bells. The tonary that concludes the Munich manuscript is complete and gathers the chant repertory classified by its final differentia, including Mass sequences and great responsories of the Night Office, something that in principle did not belong in a tonary. This monumental work was never copied again in full, but the abridged tonary enjoyed greater success, being transcribed in twelve manuscripts from southern Germany.

His importance lies in having preserved and ordered the Carolingian and post-Carolingian theoretical tradition, transmitting it through copies that would otherwise have been lost.