HISTORY OF THE GALLUS® Light
Designed with passion in Switzerland 
The History of the GALLUS® Light
In a small medieval town of Arbon on Lake Constance (built on the vestiges of a millennia old Celtic and then Roman settlement), an international patent attorney/former Senior Design Engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center meets a brilliant Swiss agro engineer with a literally revolutionary prototype.
For the first time in thousands of years of candle use, control of the movement of a flame is possible. The technology is so simple, it could have been invented by the Romans yet clever enough to be worthy of Leonardo da Vinci. The result of this meeting is the GALLUS™ Light candle holder.
About the Name
The name “Gallus” may sound familiar to some. Historians might ask, was the GALLUS™ Light named after the candle used by the warriors of Gaul, a rank of imperial Roman gladiator? Or was it named after Cornelius Gallus, the Roman pretor who became famous because he died while kissing the hand of his wife? If not, then certainly after Trebonianus Gallus, the Roman Emperor from the year 251-253?
Or was it named for the seventh century Saint Gallus, an Irish missionary who arrived at the Celtic village of Arbon and moved into the Arbon forest in the year 612 AD, around which the city of St. Gallen, Switzerland grew? Frankly, the latter, but the other meanings tend to add romance and intrigue to the name so we will not completely disown them particularly because Arbon, Switzerland, the town whose images adorn packaging of the GALLUS™ Light candle holder, was an ancient Roman town, home to Roman Emperor Flavius Gratianus from 378 to 401, a friend to the Early Church, a town with a historical past that would rival those of any other Roman town outside the Peninsula of Italy.
Adventurous St. Gallus
The adventurous St. Gallus is best known for talking with a bear which threatened his camp in the wilderness. Instead of fleeing for his life, he calmly ordering the bear to add wood to his campfire.
The bear obeyed and for this, St. Gallus offered the bear a loaf of bread and made him promise never to return again. Because of this and other signs of his benediction, Gallus was invited to become an Abbot and later became a Saint. Like Gallus, who was able to command a wild bear to provide him with light and warmth with a calm spirit, the GALLUS™ Light commands the otherwise wild and random movements of a flame, to rotate about the wick at the rate of a human heartbeat, about 80 rotations per minute, a rate associated with calm and tranquility. The wooden base of the GALLUS™ Light is old growth Swiss wood, symbolic of the wood brought to the campfire by the bear. The metal ring is symbolic of the prosperity that St. Gallus helped bring about (to those who would use a GALLUS™ Light to help keep the bears of Wall Street back, there is story there, but prosperity wasn’t St. Gallus’s concern).
On March 29th, 2010, in Solothurn, during a reception after the Chrisam Mass, Bishop Kurt Koch of the Diocese of Basel, which includes Arbon, the home of the inventor and designer of the Gallus Light, received the first candle holder. There they received the Bishop’s blessing as the inventor and designer embark on their endeavor to make the candle holder available to those who wish to have one. Considering that the Bishop of Basel was the responsible Bishop for Arbon and so, in the Bishop of St. Gallen’s mind, rightly the bishop to receive the first GALLUS™ Light candle holder, the Bishop of St. Gallen chose to wait to accept his GALLUS™ Light candle holder until the next day. Therefore, on March 30, 2010, the GALLUS™ Light was given to Bishop of the Diocese of St. Gallus, Dr. Markus Büchel. The Bishop and his chancellor, Mr. Eisenring, graciously received the inventor and designer of the GALLUS™ Light in the Bishop’s apartment in the Abbey of St. Gallen, treating them to a tour of the cathedral including the Gallus Crypt and Gallus Chapel, the climax of which was the laying of the GALLUS™ Light before the bones of the patron saint in his crypt. Bishop Markus commented that the rotating flame was very peaceful, like the beating of a heart. As a thank you for this gift, the Bishop provided a copy of the book “St. Gallus in seiner Kapelle” by Johannes Duft, and wrote a note to commemorate the giving of the Gallus Light, “with great thanks”, signing and sealing his comments with the Seal of the Diocese. That evening in Arbon, the town that so surrounded the life of the Saint, a beautiful, intense rainbow rose like a massive column out of the bay, somehow as if to approve the events of the day.
The year 2010 marks 1400 years since St. Gallus continued on his journey, which began years before in Ireland, leaving France and moving onward to Germany and later St. Gallen, Switzerland, where he established his monastery around which the city of St. Gallen grew and flourished. Each rotation of the flame then is reminiscent of each step he took on his fateful journey. In 2012, the city and canton of St. Gallen, Switzerland will celebrate 1400 years since the founding of the the City of St. Gallen, marked by Gallus’s encounter with the bear. The GALLUS™ Light commemorates this event in a unique and special way.
What’s the significance of the rotating flame? A Gallus disciple might consider the golden ring of light created by the rotating flame as symbolic of Gallus’s halo or of the prosperity that followed him. Gallus disciple or not, is this late appearance of his name’s sake lantern that could have existed in ancient times yet somehow escaped the imagination of the greatest minds from the beginning of time until today, which strikingly symbolizes some of the legends surrounding that old Saint, a complete coincidence? Or is it a sign from above that there are better days before us? We hope so, for everyone’s sake. May the GALLUS™ Light warm you and light your way into a future of peace and prosperity! May 2010 be known as the Decade of the “GALLUS™” Light!