ON ST. TANCO, BISHOP OF VERDEN IN LOWER SAXONY.
Around the Year of Christ 800.
Commentary
Tanco, Bishop of Verden in Lower Saxony (St.)
G. H.
[1] Lower Saxony is intersected by the River Weser; formerly the western part was called Westphalia and the eastern Ostphalia. In the latter, beyond the Weser, the Bishopric of Verden was erected by Charlemagne; its first Bishops were Sts. Swibert and Patto, of whom the former is venerated on the Kalends of March and the latter on the third day before the Kalends of April. Albert Krantz treats of them in book 1 of his Metropolis, chapters 6 and 21, and writes the following about the next successor in the following chapter:
[2] "Tanco, the third Bishop of that Church, when his predecessor had departed to heaven on the third day before the Kalends of April (for this alone of all things we have found recorded), succeeded to the pontifical ministry in the Church. He too was a Scot by nation and an Abbot of the same monastery of Amarbaric in that province, succeeding Patto in both positions. He also, having gone on pilgrimage for the sake of divine religion, found a worthy place for himself in which to serve Christ, longing to gain the crown of martyrdom among a fierce people, since he had heard that not many years before, that glory had befallen St. Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz, an Englishman by nation, in Frisia. He too could have attained the prize of the heavenly calling through a similar occasion, but an envious fate (not to say the negligence of writers) has withheld from us by what death he was translated to heaven. How long he presided over his Church; whether he ended by the martyrdom of blood (since in his times the most serious rebellions erupted in Saxony) or by the suffering of the spirit alone (because he saw the glory of God not progressing as he wished) — we have found no record. Nortila, the fourth, succeeded him in the succession, whose life and deeds are known to God alone. Only this much is recorded in the Annals. Of what nation he was, how long he governed the Church, what deeds he accomplished, how he died — absolutely nothing is written; but when his predecessor Tanco had departed hence to a better kingdom on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of March, he was elevated to the episcopate." So far Krantz. But since the seventeenth day before the Kalends does not occur in February, others seem to have read the fourteenth day before the Kalends of March and assigned his death to that day.
[3] In subsequent times, as the same Krantz reports in chapter 29, the eighth Bishop of Verden was Harruch, a man filled with all virtues, whose dates and deeds are not recorded. Only this has been noted: that he died on the Ides of July. He too was a Scot by nation, as were two before him, and he too was from Amarbaric... "The singular devotion and thirst for martyrdom itself drew these outstanding men to throw themselves into the labor for the prize of the heavenly calling." But the Annals noted this: "The relics of this Bishop and of Lord Patto, the second Bishop from this order, were brought together with the Dalmatic of Tanco to the church of Verden and placed in the middle of the monastery, not in one place but separately, at whose tombs many miracles were seen among the sick." "The matter," he says, "is ancient and almost obsolete, and therefore the years of the Incarnation of the Lord are not written. I have set down the words of the Annals faithfully." The statement that the relics were brought into the church shows that they lived and died elsewhere than in the church of Verden, perhaps at Konende, which was the first site of the established episcopal church. "For that diocese extends far to the East through the territory of the Duchy of Luneburg all the way to the March of Brandenburg." So says Krantz, from whom others have amplified their accounts.
[3] Just as the Dalmatic of St. Tanco alone — because his body was not found — seems to have been preserved among the people of Verden as sacred relics with greater veneration, so his name has been inscribed in the registers of Saints by various writers. Gelenius in the Cologne Fasti opens this day thus: "Of St. Tanco the Scot, whom our Emperor Charlemagne gave as the third Bishop to the Church of Verden." He omits the title of martyr, which is not expressed in Krantz; Gaspar Bruschius in his Bishops of Verden likewise does not append it, and his words are: "Tanco, the third Bishop, succeeded St. Patto; he too was a Scot." And then concerning Harruch: "Under this Bishop, the Bishops St. Patto and St. Tanco of Verden, illustrious for miracles, were canonized and enrolled in the number of the Saints by the Supreme Pontiff." The same account of the canonization is found in Bucelinus in his Sacred Germany.
[4] Wion wrote in the Benedictine Martyrology that he died a Martyr: "In the city of Verden," he says, "of St. Tancho, Bishop and Martyr. He was first a monk, then Abbot of the monastery of Amarbaric in Scotland, whence he drew his origin; inflamed with the desire of obtaining martyrdom, he hastened to Saxony, where he succeeded St. Patto in the bishopric of the Church of Verden, and at last, most cruelly slain by the fury of the people whose vices he reproved, he departed through the palm of martyrdom to Christ." Menardus, Dorganius, Bucelinus (themselves Benedictines), and also Ferrarius in his General Catalogue, Wilson in the English Martyrology, and others copy from Wion and call him a Martyr — which, in the silence of the ancients, is not immediately proved. Krantz certainly says that his manner of death is unknown.
[5] Another controversy concerns his homeland and the monastery of Amarbaric. Fitzimon inscribed him in the Catalogue of the Saints of Ireland. Colgan followed him in the Acts of the Saints of Ireland, moved by two reasons: first, that all the Scots who in those times and earlier were distinguished for piety or learning in France and Germany were Irish; second, that the monastery of Amarbaric ought to be read as Armagh among the Irish. But neither reason is approved by us. Camerarius inscribed the same in the Menologion of the Scots for this day, and Dempster on the thirteenth of February and again on the sixteenth, on which he asserts the feast of the canonization is celebrated. The same Dempster, in book 18 of his Ecclesiastical History of the Scottish Nation, adds that Tanco wrote one book on all the Gospels. But on whose authority does he prove this? Leslie is silent, who in book 5 of his Deeds of the Scots, under Conval the sixty-sixth King, is the first among the writers we have read to attribute the laurel of martyrdom to him. Others followed him without further inquiry.
[6] Concerning the time of his See, we gather only this: that the first eight Bishops did not administer that Church for a long time, since Heligandus, the ninth Bishop of Verden, in the year 831, was present with other Bishops at the consecration of St. Anschar as Archbishop of Hamburg by Drogo of Metz, as is stated in the Life of St. Anschar, the third of February, chapter 5, number 19. Hence we judge that Tanco died around the year 800 or even earlier.