Englmar

ON BLESSED ENGELMARUS, HERMIT AND MARTYR IN BAVARIA.

Engelmarus, Hermit and Martyr in Germany (B.)

Beginning of the twelfth century.

[1] Ferrarius in his general catalogue of Saints, under January 14: "In Bavaria, of Blessed Engelmarus the hermit." And again on the twenty-fourth, for which he gives no reason. It will be clear below that he was killed on this day, or on the day next following the octave of Epiphany. He cites the Annals of Bavaria. The feast of Blessed Engelmarus, Henricus Canisius in volume 6 of the Antiquae Lectiones published the Origins of Windberg from an ancient codex of that monastery, and in them the deeds of Blessed Engelmarus; His life, which Raderus rendered more elegantly in volume 1 of Bauaria Sancta, citing the unpublished notes of Bruschius, as he acknowledges in the section on Blessed Wilhelm there; and afterward Brunner in Annals 11, no. 8, under the title "The bloody death of St. Engelmarus." This honor of sanctity is rightly attributed to him, His sanctity, since in a life already written nearly five hundred years ago, the cell of St. Engelmarus and the patronage of the heavenly-designated Martyr are celebrated. And Raderus is witness that he is still celebrated at Windberg today.

[2] The writer of those origins and the life was a follower of the Premonstratensian order The writer of the life, and an alumnus of the monastery of Windberg. He himself testifies: "In the year 1142 from the Incarnation of the Lord, with King Conrad governing the monarchy, with the venerable Bishop Henry presiding over our diocesan Church, in the first year of the entrance of the venerable Father and provost of this place, Gebhard," etc. And shortly after: "The venerable Stilco, Bishop of Olomouc, from the province of Moravia, consecrated those altars—a man of great name and merit, pleasing and welcome to both spiritual and lay persons, a lover of religion, as regards the profession of our order, namely the Premonstratensian."

[3] He seems to have lived under the very beginnings of that monastery and thus of the order. The writer's era, For speaking of Rudbert, the first Provost of Windberg, he says: "The aforesaid Rudbert, formerly merely a secular Priest, but now also an aspirant to a stricter way of life." And earlier, speaking of Blessed William: "Through which (spirit of prophecy), since he foretold many things, as the Countess Luitkard of blessed memory, his patroness, related to us," etc. He seems to have written the earlier part of the booklet, including the life of St. Engelmarus, while Rudbert was still alive, as that particle "now" indicates; and to have added the rest afterwards, as events unfolded, up to the dedication of the greater basilica in the year 1167, Indiction 1, on the fourth day before the Kalends of December.

[4] The writer's credibility. His credibility is established by the fact that he reports only what was either seen by him in person or received from eyewitnesses. However, because he assigns only the feast day to the Saints, without expressing the year—which was readily available—he is judged a careless writer by Brunner in the cited book, no. 2. Concerning Engelmarus, he is entirely silent about what year of either his age or Christ's he died; when he moved to his second hermitage, he indicates as if in passing, by recording the death of St. Gregory, his master in the anchoritic life, which occurred on September 23, 1093.

[5] The County of Bogen. Between the rivers Regen and Ilz—of which the latter flows into the Danube opposite Passau, the former at Regensburg—extending toward the borders of Bohemia, the County of Bogen stretches across a celebrated and ample domain, as Aventinus in Annals 7 and Hundius in volume 3 of the Metropolis, recounting the origin and progress of the monastery of Windberg, relate. It is commonly called Pogen and Bogen, which some interpret as "arch" (that being the meaning of the word Bogen); hence others trace the origin of the family De Arcu at Lake Garda in Italy. Still others divine that the vestiges of the ancient Boii survive here even in the name. That part of the county which tends toward the north and Bohemia is commonly called "Waldt," that is, forest, from the Hercynian forest, which, as it once covered that entire domain, so it still girds it even now with enormous forests in some places.

[6] Into this forest, then, in the year 1093, Engelmarus migrated from Passau and dwelt near Windi Mountain, or Windberg, The monastery of Windberg. not far from the Bogen municipal seat and mountain fortress, with Straubing, or Strubing, built later on the other bank of the Danube, two miles distant. There, some years later, Adelbert the Count built the very spacious monastery of Windberg—which still flourishes—of the Premonstratensian order, in a most pleasant location. In the chorography of Bavaria carefully prepared by Peter Weiner, a place within the Hercynian forest itself is visible called Engelmanswaldt, or the forest of Engelmarus. Whether his hermitage was there, or a chapel erected over his sepulchre that expanded into a larger village through the influx of supplicants, and that came by donation of Count Adelbert to the endowment of the monastery of Windberg, we have by no means ascertained.

[7] What Raderus writes—"Engelmarus fixed his abode with a companion near the forests and groves of Windberg, later founded"—must be understood of the monastery (which, like the village itself, is commonly called Windberg), for both the village and the church are older than the arrival of Engelmarus. The origin of the name and church. It is established from the cited origins of the place that a certain Winth, or Wind, a Saxon by nation, the first inhabitant of the place and the author of its name, built a church there (though in what year is uncertain) in honor of the Virgin Mother of God and All Saints, with many relics brought there and concealed in stones enclosed by him in the altar, in the presence of the Priest Azelinus. These relics are enumerated there by their names. This Wind had an older brother, as is related in the same place, of the same name, who had assisted in the building of that church, and who had come from Saxony to those parts in the time of King Ludwig, with the Huns escorting him. This seems to have occurred under King Ludwig, son of the Emperor Arnulf, who died in the year of Christ 912, in the twelfth year of his reign; for during his reign the Huns, or Hungarians, repeatedly ravaged the German provinces, and in particular Saxony and Thuringia, as is clear from the continuator of Regino, Hermann Contractus, Lambert of Schafnburg, and others. By this reckoning, you will conclude that the name and church of Windberg are a full century earlier than the birth of Engelmarus. And this is the "honorable and lovable antiquity of the Church of Windberg," as the anonymous writer of the origins says.

[8] Before Engelmarus too, as the same author writes, The dwelling of Blessed Wilhelm in that district. no small measure of grace was added to that place—which had been so enriched by the great relics of the Saints (by the Wind brothers)—by that veteran and retired soldier of Christ, Wilhelm, who, broken by long pilgrimages to the various shrines of Saints and by his labors, led a hermitical life there; with the pious woman Luitkard, wife of Count Hertwic II of Bogen and mother of Albert I, the founder of Windberg (not his wife, as Raderus writes, confusing her with his daughter-in-law Hadwig), supplying him with provisions. He foretold to this patroness of his, who long survived him, the defeat of the Saxons at the river Vostrutum, which occurred in the year 1075, as is evident from Schafnburg and others. Albert I, who is also the founder of the monastery of Windberg, The Counts of Windberg. is called Count Adelbert of Windeberch in a bull by which Eugenius II, in the year of Christ 1126, confirms the second foundation or restoration of Upper Altaich, volume 2 of Hundius's Metropolis; and by Henninges, volume 4 of the Stemmata, he is called Windbergensis. This name, derived from the fortress (perhaps located on the very spot where the monastery was later placed), seems to distinguish him from the other family of Bogen, whose branch—begun by Frederick, brother of Asswin, grandfather of Albert—had at this time as its chief, in a separate domain, Frederick's son Frederick, Advocate of the Church of Regensburg, mentioned in the same diploma of Honorius.

[9] "Engelmarus lived," says Raderus, "in the year of our Lord 1088"—which Ferrarius renders as: The time of the martyrdom of Blessed Engelmarus. "He departed this life around the year of salvation 1088." But in the year 1093 Bishop Gregory died, and after that Engelmarus withdrew to the wilderness near Windberg, where he died a Martyr not many years later. Brunner assigns his death to the year 1096, but he errs when he writes that he was slain on the seventh day before the Ides of January, as Raderus says on the very day of Epiphany; for the nearly contemporary author expressly asserts that it happened after the octave of Epiphany.

LIFE, BY AN ANONYMOUS AUTHOR,

from volume 6 of the Antiquae Lectiones of Henricus Canisius.

Engelmarus, Hermit and Martyr in Germany (B.)

By an anonymous author.

[1] Furthermore, at the suggestion of the venerable Presbyter Rudbert, and with the assent of the aforesaid Count Adelbert, there passed into the possession of this forest locale the cell of St. Engelmarus; concerning whom, wishing to provide future writers with the occasion for writing more, we lay the foundations of a diligent inquiry. St. Engelmarus, a farmer, We have found that he was Bavarian by nation and a farmer by birth and occupation—that is, a tiller of the soil. But having renounced earthly desires and abandoned his own possessions for the love of Christ, he began the discipline of the hermitical life under the instruction of St. Gregory, formerly, as they say, Archbishop of the Armenians, He is instructed by Bishop Gregory in piety, but who had then, with a richer hope of heavenly reward, embraced voluntary poverty together with pilgrimage near Passau. After Gregory's death, as he himself had foretold, on the ninth day before the Kalends of October, around midday, He becomes a hermit, at the hour when that most famous eclipse of the sun occurred—which was followed not only by a great mortality but also by the Jerusalem expedition, He lives by the labor of his hands, initiated by Pope Urban II—Blessed Engelmarus betook himself to the wilderness of his repose. Having made his dwelling there, he began to live by the labor of his hands, according to the Psalmist and the Apostle, and no less fervently in spirit to seek the grace of his Creator through vigils, fasts, and prayers.

[2] When, on account of his goodness and religious character, he was greatly esteemed by all who lived around him, He is killed by his companion out of envy: his companion—a new Cain, so to speak—driven by envy of the divinely bestowed grace that was superior in him, and grieving that he himself appeared unequal, did not shrink from laying hands on him when no witnesses were present: he struck him and covered him with snow and rubble. For it is said that this crime was committed on the day after the octave of Epiphany, and was concealed by various pretenses and dissimulations until Pentecost. But beyond the feast of the Holy Spirit, the perpetrator of so great a crime could not remain hidden, since it is the Spirit's own office to convict the world of sin. And so, with the blood of the new Abel crying out to the Lord, that new Cain became a wanderer and fugitive—he who had hoped, after the death of Blessed Engelmarus, to obtain sole mastery of the hermitage, together with equal human favor, after the example of the Jews, who killed Christ to keep their place, but on account of the slain Christ lost their place and were scattered to every wind.

[3] A certain secular Priest came, and finding the body, buried it in a common manner— His body is buried: not according to the sublimity of his sanctity, but according to the lowliness of his poverty. For this act of piety and its reward was reserved for the aforesaid Rudbert, formerly merely a secular Priest, but now also an aspirant to a stricter way of life—namely, that he might prepare a worthy monument for the worthy man, into which his sacred bones might then be translated; It is translated: especially since a stone church, built through the same Rudbert's efforts over his grave, was to be dedicated in the year of the Incarnation of our Lord one thousand one hundred and thirty-one, with Innocent II and Lothar III governing the Papacy and the Empire in concord.

[4] From the first burial, however, by divine instinct it became, as it were, an established custom that every year in the middle of Pentecost week the people should flock there and devoutly seek the patronage of the heavenly-designated Martyr. For as faithful men still living declare in their words, when that place once had no inhabitant It is piously visited. and a humble little building covered the sepulchre of the venerable hermit, and they happened to pass by at night, they beheld there numerous lights divinely kindled, It is honored with heavenly light, shining with marvelous brightness, which invited them not only to look in but also to enter. Moreover they smelled the sweetest fragrances, without any aromatic substance being present. And with sweet fragrance: Furthermore, many sick and afflicted persons are reported to have experienced cures and deliverances there; but since they are unknown to us, we await those known to us about whom we may write. It is distinguished by other miracles. For we hope that in future times a greater glory of God will appear there.

a He had prefixed two chapters about the name and church of Windberg and about Blessed Wilhelm.

b Earlier, speaking of Blessed Wilhelm, he had written: "Hertwic, Bishop of Regensburg, of honored memory, dedicated the chapel which Count Adelbert, admonished in a dream, built over him (Blessed Wilhelm) as a remedy for a serious illness." Hartwic sat, as Hundius records in volume 1 of the Metropolis, from the year 1105 to 1126.

c Aventinus in his Nomenclatura says: "Angel and engel mean, for us Bavarian Germans, a sting, a hinge, a boundary. Hence Angilomarus, Engelmair, means 'one who increases the boundary.'" The latter part of the word, besides augmentation, signifies a rumor according to Heuterus in his Ancient Belgium, and according to Junius, Batavia chapter 23, it means a Prefect, or Meier—a name still commonly used in Belgian and German towns and villages.

d γεωργός means a farmer.

e This is commonly called Passau, formerly Batava, as we said on January 8 in the life of St. Severinus, chapter 6, no. 27. Raderus understood it as Padua in Venetia; for he writes that Gregory secretly left his pontifical dignity and came to Italy on pilgrimage, dwelling near Padua. More correctly Brunner: "Engelmarus, raised in the country and having passed from the field and plow to the cultivation of his soul, had placed himself under the tutelage of Gregory, the exiled Pontiff of Armenia, in Bavaria."

f Urspergensis: "In the year 1093 there was an eclipse of the sun on the ninth day before the Kalends of October at the third hour, and a great mortality followed." Dodechinus in the Appendix to Marianus: "An eclipse of the sun occurred at the third hour of the day, and a dragon was seen. In the year 1094 there was a great pestilence."

g In the year 1095, toward the end, it was decreed at the Council of Clermont; in 1096 it was undertaken, with Godfrey of Bouillon as the principal leader.

h "Engelmarus," says Brunner, "was revealed by the sun melting the snow."

i The catalogue of Abbots of Windberg in Hundius reads thus: "Rudbert, a secular priest invested with the Premonstratensian sacred order in the year of Christ's Incarnation 1125, began to govern this Church as its first Provost. He governed for 15 years." We showed above on January 13 that St. Norbert came to Regensburg in that year. At that time, then, the foundations of the monastery of Windberg were laid—or rather when Norbert returned from Rome at the beginning of the year 1126; for in the Apostolic confirmation of the order made on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of March 1226, no mention is made of Windberg, while the other monasteries, their properties, vineyards, manses, etc. are most carefully enumerated.

k In the Canisian edition, through a copyist's error, it reads: "in the year one thousand one hundred and first." Lothar was created Emperor in 1125, Innocent II became Roman Pontiff in 1130.

l Elsewhere in Germany, on the Wednesday of Pentecost week, processions to the sepulchres of the Saints are customary.