Rupert

CONCERNING ST. RUPERT, OR RUPERTUS, APOSTLE OF THE BAVARIANS, BISHOP OF SALZBURG IN GERMANY.

IN THE YEAR 623, OR 628.

Preliminary Commentary.

Rupert, or Rupertus, Bishop of Salzburg in Germany (Saint)

Section I. The era, homeland, and Acts of St. Rupert.

[1] The regions of the Noricans, Vindelicians, and Rhaetians were watered by the labors of various apostolic men; among whom was St. Valentine, Bishop of Passau, who died around the year 440; When the Bavarians were joined to the empire of the Austrasian Franks and St. Severinus the Priest, translated to the heavens in 485, both of whom were elucidated by us in January -- the latter on the seventh and the former on the eighth day of the month. Into those regions the Boii then crossed over (afterward called Boioarii and Baiuvarii, and finally Bavarians), under Duke Theodo, the first of that name, and at first attached to the Goths in the beginning of the occupied possession; afterward, as the glory of these waned, they began to look to the then more illustrious name and empire of the Franks, if not under Clovis I, certainly under his son Theodoric. For (as was shown by us in section 4 before the Acts of St. Sigebert of the Austrasian Franks, on February 1, and as is clear from the prologue prefixed to the Bavarian laws) Theodoric, when he was at Chalons, ordered the law of the Franks (namely the Ripuarians), the Alamanni, and the Bavarians to be written down for each nation that was under his power, according to its own custom: and whatever Theodoric could not amend on account of the most ancient custom of the pagans, the Austrasian Kings Childebert, Clothar, and Dagobert afterward perfected.

[2] Therefore the Christian faith, according to whose prescriptions Theodoric intended to establish laws for the Bavarians notwithstanding the contrary and ingrained custom of the Pagans, St. Rupert announced the faith, had already been received by their Dukes and a great part of the people, preached to them by St. Rupert, or Rupertus, or also, as others write, Robert: who in the second year of King Childebert was held as Bishop in the city of Worms, and after the labors of a glorious apostolate ended his life on the day of the Lord's Resurrection, the sixth before the Kalends of April. Childebert began to reign on Christmas Day in the year 575, having scarcely completed one lustrum of age: Bishop of Worms from 577 at which such tender age of the King, it is not surprising if the more insolent pagans, who still remained in greater numbers at Worms, dared to expel the Bishop from the city: but either expelled by his own people at that time or voluntarily departing thereafter, he seized the opportunity to enter through the open and great door which the inclination to the Christian faith of Duke Theodo, the third of that name, opened -- an inclination drawn, as some wish, from his Christian wife Regintrude: whom they make to be a daughter of Theodebert I, King of the Austrasians, in the year 548, but they lack ancient authorities by which to prove this. There are those who maintain that the Saint traveled for two years before he came to Theodo, and even went to Rome under Pelagius II: which we neither wish to refute nor are able to admit as certain, since it rests on no other authority than a spurious history of St. Rupert, whose emptiness we must presently examine.

[3] This is more certain: that from the year when the aforesaid Childebert began his reign, died 623 or 628. there was no year in which Easter fell on the sixth before the Kalends of April other than the year of Christ 623: therefore, in that year, or in the year 628, which similarly produced Easter closest to that date, St. Rupert must have died: for this did not happen again in that entire century. The former year is preferred by most, because they believed the compiler of a history to be condemned, who credited St. Rupert with having presided over the Church of Juvavia for forty-four years, beginning the origin of that See from the fourth year of Childeric, the year of Christ 579. Brunner, from the testimony of certain domestic Annals, begins Rupert's apostolate to the Bavarians from the year 616: whether he began preaching in the year 579 or 616? according to which the Saint would have to be said either to have been expelled from Worms much later, or, after a brief exile, to have been received back and presided over the Church for a long time before he was summoned to the Bavarians. To us, what should preferably be followed here does not appear clear: for if the authority of those Annals is uncertain, about which it is not known when they were written, much more suspect is that history of St. Rupert, from which those forty-four years are taken, certainly compiled after many centuries quite unskillfully from more ancient records soon to be cited below, and from a certain passion of St. Trudbert to be examined on May 25, whether then the See of Salzburg was established? and from certain fables of Bavarian Origins. Perhaps someone would come nearer to the truth who suspected that the year which Brunner found noted was the birthday of the Salzburg episcopate, after the Saint had disseminated the word of God by his fruitful preaching in various parts among the Bavarians for several years: which indeed seems very much in conformity with the context of their Acts themselves. With which it would also be more conformable to say that the Saint did not remain perpetually in exile from Worms, but that after some time he was restored to his See: since, having been asked by Theodo, he is said not to have come immediately but, having sent envoys ahead, to have explored how suitable the Bavarians were for receiving the Gospel: so that one might also think that upon his departure he substituted a Vicar at Worms, and then when he decided to remain among the Bavarians, he transferred the very title of the Bishopric of Worms to the same man.

[4] Moreover, that history which we have mentioned and which Canisius published in volume 6 of the Antiquae Lectiones, page 1107, Ireland is not the homeland of St. Rupert and his companions we are so far from thinking should be followed by us or reprinted in this work, that we would not even have wished to mention it here, had not others so greatly trusted it, and most recently John Colgan and Charles le Cointe -- the former in his Acts of the Saints of Ireland, the latter in his Annals of the Frankish Church -- assuming from them as certain that Ireland was the homeland of St. Rupert, and consequently not only of him but also of St. Erentrude, whom the history makes a sister instead of a niece, and of St. Trudbert, who is feigned to be the brother of both, having traveled with both in Italy before he went to Worms. even the very form of the names indicates this: To refute which I will not say that these names are purely and simply Germanic or Frankish, savoring nothing of Irish origin (for they would object and say that they pleased a parent or ancestor tracing lineage from Gaul), but I will say that all the Acts of this Saint alike, and that very History, attest that he, after Theodo's death, considering how many were still entangled in the errors of paganism, set out to his homeland to recruit companions for the work of the Gospel; and from there brought back Chuniald and Gislar with ten others, whom Aventinus names, I know not from where, but with names partly Latin, partly likewise Frankish or German, like the two already indicated -- no one with an Irish name.

[5] That he was not baptized by St. Patrick Moreover, it seemed fitting to him who had feigned the aforesaid Saints to be Irish that he should also feign them to have been baptized by St. Patrick and instructed in ecclesiastical letters: whom, even if we established that he died not in the year 460, as we have proved, but that he lived almost to the year 500, as others do, yet see how immense the age of St. Rupert would have had to be! And how much more immense that of Trudbert, whose aforesaid Acts, or at least some manuscript compendium of them transmitted to us from Constance, write that he set out from his homeland in the times of Boniface IV, around the year of Christ 640? Cornelius Curtius the Augustinian, having undertaken to adorn the Acts of Saints Rupert and Virgil with great pomp of prose and verse, was alone unable to dissimulate that fiction about St. Patrick, although he accepted all other fictions of the said history as certain. The fiction itself, moreover, seems attributable to the already indicated presumptuousness of Irish pilgrims, the reckoning of time as well. who unhesitatingly assert that foreign Saints of whatever places came from Ireland: whom the more easily were believed because very many illustrious Saints had come from Ireland to the whole West, and because especially the praise of learning had for some time been almost their own, as inhabitants of the most noble monasteries in Germany and even at Regensburg, and through the most praiseworthy episcopate of St. Virgil the Irishman, they were also influential at Salzburg.

[6] We, however, rejecting the fictions with which the aforesaid History abounds, His twofold Acts from manuscripts. bring forth the more genuine Acts; the first indeed from the distinguished manuscript of the Convent of St. Mark of the Dominican Friars at Florence, extracted by us in the year 1661 and compared with those which Canisius published in volume 6 of the Antiquae Lectiones, page 1038, from a very ancient manuscript of the monastery of St. Peter at Regensburg, produced for this purpose in the year 1462 so that the canonization of St. Vitalis might be obtained -- that is, the one who as the first Abbot of St. Peter's succeeded St. Rupert as the nearest successor in the episcopate. These Acts, however, just as they are found augmented with an extravagant apparatus of superfluous words in the Boeddeken manuscript, which we shall sometimes cite in the annotations; so on the contrary they are read reduced to an epitome at the beginning of the opuscule which a certain disciple of St. Eberhard composed about the Bishops of Salzburg in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1186: which Canisius published from a manuscript in volume 2 of the Antiquae Lectiones, page 255, and again in volume 6, page 1138, as that same author altered it, who deformed the Acts of St. Rupert by interpolation, as we have said: which edition being omitted, we shall more willingly use the first, as being the more genuine, whenever there is need.

[7] In the second Acts, certain things about St. Erentrude his niece. We shall then give other Acts of St. Rupert from the second part of the Hagiologium of the Brabantines, transcribed by Heribert Rosweyde at the monastery of Rouge-Cloitre near Brussels: both because they excellently confirm the genuineness of the first Acts, and because they contain certain things common to the Saint himself and to the Blessed Erentrude not easily found elsewhere: since the proper Acts of this virgin have been lost among the people of Salzburg, and in their place other Acts were composed and are to be found in Canisius, which were clearly simply accepted from the earlier Acts of St. Rupert, insofar as therein it is only narrated that the Saint, having been brought to Salzburg, presided over a founded monastery of virgins. From these second Acts, however, we cut away the prologue, written by the compiler of the Hagiologium, whose sole intent was to illustrate the Carolingian lineage by gathering from everywhere Acts of Frankish Saints as belonging to it and therefore also to his own Brabant; inasmuch as Princes of this lineage had held ample possessions there.

Section II. Cult, successors, and Translation of St. Rupert.

[8] Memory inscribed in the calendars: But enough about these matters: let us come to the ecclesiastical cult, of which we have evidence from the very ancient Augsburg Martyrology, which we copied in the monastery of St. Ulrich, and which on the sixth before the Kalends of April has the memory of St. Rupert, Bishop and Confessor, added later to the few commemorated on that day. The same words are found in the Utrecht manuscript Martyrology: but the name is written Ruothpertus: to which Greven accedes in his Additions to Usuard and, expressing the name of the bishopric, directs that it be read: "Rupert, Bishop of the city of the Vangiones, which is now called Worms, and Confessor": and the manuscript Florarium of the Saints reads: "The Deposition of St. Rupert, Bishop of Worms and Confessor." Not correctly attributed to Worms: All of which, together with the ancient Acts

agree. But Molanus in similar additions to Usuard wrote thus: At Worms, St. Rupert, Bishop and Confessor, who in the times of Childebert propagated the doctrine of the Gospel in Bavaria, Austria, Styria, and throughout Noricum. But what is indicated by this manner of speaking -- that at Worms some feast of this Saint or some commemoration is observed in the church -- is proved false from the calendars and breviaries of that Church, in which there is no mention of St. Rupert.

[9] More correctly the Roman Martyrology ascribed his veneration to Salzburg, veneration in Bavaria and Austria with the eulogy that he had marvelously propagated the Gospel among the Bavarians and Noricans. In the ancient Breviaries of those Churches indeed -- the Regensburg one of the year 1507 and the Passau one of the year 1505 -- the Office of St. Rupert is contained, drawn from the lessons of the history of his life; nor is there any doubt that the same is found in the old Salzburg Breviary with even greater right, just as among the Offices proper to that Church, published after the year 1600, it is prescribed that the Office be performed for him as for a Bishop Confessor and Patron under the double rite. Under which same rite the Churches of Wuerzburg, Vienna, Freising, and perhaps many others throughout Germany also undertook to venerate St. Rupert, with a proper Office to nearly all of which the common lessons that the Salzburgers use are now assigned. In these, however, the violent and ignominious expulsion is passed over in silence, which even Aventinus also concealed.

[10] Concerning the Successors of St. Rupert, partly in the Bishopric and partly in the Abbey of St. Peter, the above-mentioned disciple of St. Eberhard wrote in these words: the successor of Rupert was St. Vitalis Therefore after the departure of the most blessed Bishop Rudbert, whose Life he had briefly set forth above, the illustrious man Vitalis, a Bishop distinguished among all the people and an outstanding teacher and sower of the Word of God, undertook to govern the See of Juvavum, that is, of Salzburg.

After whose passing, Anzologus became Abbot. After whose deposition, Abbot Savolus adhered to the aforesaid See. after him three Abbots When the course of his life was ended, Abbot Ezius succeeded. When he departed from this world, that See once more shone, honored by Bishop Flobargisus. After whom John exercised pastoral care in the aforesaid See. For after Vitalis, down to Flobargisus, Salzburg had no bishops of its own (except that certain foreigners, such as St. Emmeram, occasionally rendered episcopal service to it), but it was joined to the Bishopric of Passau, meanwhile Salzburg remained joined to the Bishopric of Passau which had been raised again from its ruins toward the end of the sixth century -- perhaps in the time of Bishop Bruno, who was appointed to the Church of Passau by Pope Honorius, as Wiguleus Hundius writes in his Metropolis, in the second year of his pontificate, that is, the year of Christ 628. To this same Bruno also the archiepiscopal dignity accrued upon the death of Philo of Lorch; and the mitre adhered to the Bishops of Passau longer than did that of Salzburg: for they held the former indeed until the year 798, but lost the latter around the end of the seventh century, when Salzburg began again to have its own bishops.

[11] That the first of these, Flobargisus, governed the bishopric for forty-three years, bishops restored to this see around the year 700 and John indeed for twenty or twenty-one, is written by the aforesaid Wiguleus Hundius. But while John was governing the Church in the times of Duke Otilo of Bavaria (as the author of the booklet on the Bishops of Salzburg continues), who was then subject to the first King of the Franks (he means Pippin, son of Charles Martel, the first of his line -- which entirely belonged to the Austrasians -- to be crowned after the Merovingian Kings were deposed), there came a certain wise man and good teacher from the island of Ireland, named Virgilius, to the aforesaid King in Francia, at the place called Quierzy. Who, out of love for God, kept him with himself for nearly two years; and having ascertained that he was well learned, sent him to the aforesaid Duke Otilo, and granted him the Bishopric of Salzburg, then vacant of a ruler. Who, having deferred ordination for the space of nearly two years, of whom the third was St. Virgilius kept with him his own Bishop, a companion from his homeland named Dobdagreus, to perform the episcopal office. Afterwards indeed, at the petition of the people and the bishops of that region, Virgilius consented to receive consecration, and he was ordained Bishop by the comprovincial Prelates, namely in the year of our Lord's nativity 767, on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of July.

[12] Then (as is found in the Life of St. Virgilius himself in Canisius, page 1174, composed perhaps by the same contemporary author who wrote the Life of St. Eberhard) having built a new church and monastery he strove to promote all the more diligently those things that pertained to the usefulness of external provision, inasmuch as the state of the Church of Salzburg then seemed recently established and small. For he constructed the fabric of a monastery from the foundation with immense labor and excellent design, and he translated the body of St. Rudbert -- which after his death had rested in the church of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles -- together with the episcopal See, which had similarly been in the aforesaid church for some years, moved by divine inspiration, to that place, namely, in which it has endured down to the present times. Of which place the same Virgilius, as is said at the end of the Life, became the consecrator in the thirteenth year. From which it would follow that this translation of St. Rupert was made around the year 780. and with the bodies of SS. Chuniald and Giselalius translated on 24 September Concerning which, in the aforesaid booklet on the Bishops, these things are read: On the eighth day before the Kalends of October, the translation of St. Bishop Rudbert, which was made by Bishop Virgilius, who together with him translated also his two Priests, SS. Chuniald and Gisilarius: whose feast, because it is held on no other day of the year, was established to be celebrated on that same day, specifically in the church to which they were translated.

[13] So writes that author, marking no year; but his partial abbreviator, partial interpolator, he dedicates it in the year not 773 in volume 6 of the Antiquae Lectiones, page 1148: In the year of the Incarnation of the Lord 767, Bishop Virgilius began to build a church of marvelous size at Salzburg, in the seventh Indiction (where one must either read the fifth Indiction, or in place of the year 67 of the century, the year 69). In the year of the Incarnation of the Lord 773, the church of St. Rudbert was first dedicated by St. Bishop Virgilius, in the twenty-sixth year of Duke Tassilo. But if Aventinus has correctly reckoned the years of the Dukes of the Bavarians, the twenty-sixth year of Tassilo -- who began to rule after his father Othilo in the year 765 -- would produce the year of Christ 791; but 780 wherefore there is suspicion that the Interpolator found only the sixteenth year of Tassilo noted (inasmuch as it approaches the year we have established), but compared it erroneously with the Christian Era, whose year at that time should have been counted not 773 but 780. He continues moreover: In the same year the same Bishop translated St. Rudbert and his two Chaplains, the Blessed Kuniald and Gisilarius.

[14] From this time the Bodies of the Saints rested until the pontificate of Luipram: second Translation on the same day he who, second from Arno, bore the title of Archbishop, elected in the year 836. For in the tenth year of his prelacy the church of St. Rudpert in Salzburg perished by fire. So asserts the Interpolator of the booklet on the Bishops of Salzburg. The author of that booklet himself, passing over in silence the time and cause of that destruction, continues thus: The same translation was afterwards repeated on the same day, after the church was reconsecrated following its ruin and the altars were changed, by the blessed and most holy Hartwig, the twenty-second Bishop (counting the Abbots as well), the twelfth Archbishop; and their bodies were then placed beside the body of their former compatriot, St. Father Rudbert. The same Hartwig, instructed by a title, discovered St. Martin and joined him to St. Rupert in a silver urn clad with gold, says Hundius. To us, as this Martin is unknown, so we should wish to learn that detail about the silver urn from some ancient document. Meanwhile from the same Hundius we learn that Hartwig assumed the Bishopric in the year 990; in the year 892 or 893 so that the manuscript Florarium Sanctorum seems to wish to note the year of this translation at the twenty-fourth of September, when it speaks thus: The Translation of the Holy Bishops and Confessors Winibald and Rupert of Salzburg, and of St. Walburga the Virgin, in the year of Salvation 892. For that one century has dropped out, and perhaps also a unit, is clear from what was said on the 25th of February, number 27, in the account of that holy virgin already treated, where we set forth that her reburial was performed by Bishop Erchambald at Eichstaett in the year 893. And why should not Wunibald the brother -- translated together with his sister from Heidenheim to Eichstaett in the year 870, not indeed a Bishop but an Abbot, to be venerated on the 18th of December -- have also been reburied in the same year as his sister, and on the same day on which St. Rupert was translated at Salzburg?

[15] Whatever the case may be, the author of the booklet on the Bishops of Salzburg, volume 2 of the Antiquae Lectiones, continues: which day is observed as a feast throughout the entire bishopric The day of this translation, on that very day, that is, on the eighth day before the Kalends of October, was established to be celebrated throughout that entire Bishopric of Salzburg. Which day is so occupied with the Offices of the dedication of the church in which the body lies, that it cannot fully serve the celebration thereof. And the day of his passing, the sixth day before the Kalends of April, on the day of the Lord's Resurrection, on account of the Offices of Lent or of Easter itself, has rarely been accustomed to be celebrated as is fitting. Therefore the following day, that is, the seventh day before the Kalends of October, is customarily dedicated to his Office and kept free, but in the city the day is 25 September but only within the city. From which custom certain persons, ignorant of the cause, have transcribed his translation to that same day, as is found in certain Martyrologies. And it is also fitting and devout that whatever another observance of another celebration -- out of reverence for the Lenten Office or the observance of Paschal joy -- has taken away from the day of the dormition of him who was the founder of the See and its Apostle, this should be supplied, at least in the house of his repose, by that assumed day of translation.

[16] A Martyrology in which the said translation is recorded on the seventh day before the Kalends of October that translation is found inscribed in the calendars we have not yet seen; but on the eighth day before the Kalends the following record it, besides the already cited Florarium Sanctorum: various manuscript calendars; then Grevenus and Molanus in their additions to Usuard; finally Canisius and Ferrarius -- to say nothing of Hugo, Menard, and Dorganius, who, like Wion in his Lignum Vitae, also record his birthday as that of a Saint from the Order of Blessed Benedict, whose Rule we consider it more probable that the monks instituted in the monastery of St. Peter at Salzburg by St. Rupert later adopted, than that it was established there by him, even though the author of the history rejected in the preceding paragraph says so; who nevertheless adds this: but whether this most holy Father was a monk is not sufficiently established. The same author writes that the earlier monastery of St. Peter was in that place also by Benedictines where later a chapel was built in honor of the Holy Cross, and which to this day is called the Cave of St. Rudbert.

LIFE

From a Florentine Manuscript and Canisius.

Rudbertus or Rupertus, Bishop of Salzburg in Germany (Saint)

BHL Number: 7393

FROM MANUSCRIPTS.

CHAPTER I

The Bishopric of St. Rupert at Worms, His Mission to the Bavarians, and the Erection of a New See.

[1] Today's feast of our most holy and most blessed

Father Rudbert, which renders his passage into paradise a cause of exultation for us, presents mystical joys to devout minds, which, as the course of the years revolves upon itself, is ever renewed in our hearts with fresh delight. For since Scripture says, "The just man shall be in eternal remembrance," he is worthily turned to the memory of men who has passed to the joy of Angels; and since it says, "A wise son is the glory of his father," how great are the glories of this man, who regenerated so many barbarous nations unto the knowledge of God in Christ Jesus through the Gospel. Psalm 111:7

[2] For in the time of King Hilpert of the Franks, namely in the second year of his reign, the holy Confessor of Christ, Rudbertus, was held to be Bishop in Worms, who, sprung from the royal stock of the Franks by noble birth, was yet nobler in faith and piety. For he was meek and chaste, Rupert, Bishop of Worms simple and prudent, devout in the praise of God, full of the Holy Spirit, provident in counsel, just in judgment, fortified by the arms of virtue on the right hand and on the left, made a pattern of right action for his flock, because what he urged in words, the same he confirmed by the prerogative of his deeds. For on the one hand he exercised himself with frequent vigils, and on the other he wasted himself with continual fasts; he adorned his work with mercy, who scattered his treasures so that, while he himself was in want, the poor might grow rich, because he believed that only that was his own which the naked or the destitute had received.

[3] When therefore the most excellent fame of this most holy man had gone forth to the ends of the earth, and most celebrated for his teaching very many illustrious men, not only from neighboring but also from foreign nations, flocked to his most holy teaching, so that either they might receive consolation in the sadness of any anxiety from his most sacred conversation, or might hear from him the pure truth of ecclesiastical religion; whence also many, liberated by his kind devotion from the snares of the ancient enemy, entered upon the way of perpetual life. But the unbelievers, who were very numerous in that region of Worms, unable to endure his holiness, afflicted him with many and very great torments, and having beaten him with rods, cast him out of the city with great ignominy. he is driven out by injury Therefore at the same time, Theodo, Duke of the Bavarians, hearing of the miracles which the most blessed man was performing and of his holiness, desired to see him, and sending his nobles, earnestly petitioned him to deign to visit the regions of the Bavarians and to show them the way of saving belief. and is sought by the Bavarians But the most holy Bishop, when he received the petitions of so great an embassy, knowing that a cause of this kind proceeded from Divine dispensation, gave thanks to heavenly Clemency that those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death desired to know Jesus Christ, the Author of life.

[4] And so with those same envoys he sent ahead his Priests, as rays of faith, to the same Duke, and he himself, he crosses over to them after no long interval of time, undertook the journey into Bavaria after them. When the aforesaid Duke heard this, filled with great joy, he hastened to meet him with a retinue of his nobles and received him in the city of Regensburg with the utmost eagerness. Then there St. Rudbertus, having proclaimed a fast, instructed the Duke in the heavenly mysteries, and strengthened him in the true faith, and made him renounce the worship of idols, and baptized him in the name of the holy and undivided Trinity. With him were baptized his nobles and a considerable multitude of noble and ignoble people, praising Jesus the Lord, Redeemer of the world, and teaches them the faith of Christ who had deigned to call them out of darkness into his marvelous light through the most blessed Rudbertus, his Confessor; through whose words darkened hearts were illuminated, and the breasts of unbelievers thirsted for the fountain of life.

[5] When therefore the Duke and the people had been baptized -- those who, with divine grace illuminating them, had received the Sacrament of the saving bath -- he baptizes them with Duke Theodo at the entreaty of Theodo, he boarded a ship and, descending along the channel of the Danube, preached the Gospel of Christ with a free voice in villages, towns, and fortresses, and throughout the territories of the Noricans, even into Lower Pannonia, he himself, a bright lamp set upon a candlestick, came ministering the light of Christ. Thence indeed, returning by land, he entered Lorch, in which he converted many from the worship of idols by regenerating them in the water of baptism, and healed many who were oppressed by various diseases in the name of the Lord. Having departed from Lorch, in whatever place he perceived the error of paganism to be rampant, and having traversed the whole region he approached there fearlessly, destroying idols, diminishing images, commending everywhere both the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ and equally his sacred Incarnation: so that one and the same might be believed to be both God and man -- true God begotten from the Father before the Morning Star, and in the fullness of time, for the salvation of humanity, the Word of God born true man from the Virgin Mother, who illuminates every man coming into this world.

[6] But when the man of God now pondered choosing a place suitable for episcopal dignity, according to the request of the Duke and the people, he erects the See of Salzburg he came to the shore of Lake Wallersee, where he built and dedicated a church in honor of Peter, Prince of the Apostles. He went out from there to the river Juvavum, where once the city of Juvavia had stood, which, marvelously built in ancient times, had been preeminent as the most noble among the Bavarian cities, but at that time, with scarcely an inhabitant dwelling there, was almost in ruins and overgrown with thickets. The servant of God, considering this place to be suitable for an episcopal See -- inasmuch as it was set apart among the mountains from the tumult of the populace -- once the ownership of it had been granted to him by the Duke, and establishes it renewed it with the greatest zeal, building there a basilica which he dedicated in honor of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and generously endowed it with clerical offices and necessary provisions through the munificence of Theodo. Afterwards he appointed the priestly office and had the entire daily cursus celebrated there in proper order. The holy man of God, therefore, desiring to enlarge the properties, purchased from the aforesaid Duke a certain estate of his, called Piding, for a thousand solidi, between gold and silver; and thus from then on, with God's help and through the grants of Kings, Dukes, and faithful men, the possessions of that place began to increase.

p. Does this form of expression indicate a particular Bavarian custom in the selling of estates? In Canisius the word Solidis is absent.

CHAPTER II

Monasteries Founded. Death: Miracles.

[7] Moreover, on certain days reliable men narrated to the most blessed Bishop with great wonder in a place revealed by heavenly light that they themselves had seen celestial prodigies of burning lamps three and four times in the wilderness, which at that time lacked any name but is now called Bongotobi, and that they had perceived fragrances of marvelous sweetness to be redolent there. While all who were present marveled at such prodigies, the holy Bishop sent his Priest Domningus to the same place, commanding him to diligently verify the truth of this sign by placing in the same place a wooden Cross, which the Saint himself

had blessed with his own hand and sent there. When Domningus arrived at the place, immediately at the first watch of the night, together with the Religious who accompanied him, they beheld bright lamps sent down from heaven descending and illuminating that entire region of the place like a ray of the sun; and he saw this vision shining for three nights accompanied by the sweetness of a marvelous fragrance. he builds the church of St. Maximilian Then he erected the blessed Cross in that place, and having built a hut above it, he returned to St. Rudbertus, confirming the earlier account with a certain report. St. Rudbertus also, taking counsel with Theodo, went in person to that same wilderness, and seeing that the place could be made suitable for human habitation, began to uproot aged oaks and reduce the dense forests to the level of a plain, and to build a church with dwellings for the servants of God.

[8] In those same times Theodo fell into ill health, and when he perceived the end of his life to be approaching, he summoned to himself his son Theodebert and appointed him Duke of the Noricans, commanding him to obey St. Rudbertus and to diligently assist him in advancing Christianity and the work of God, which Theopert endows, with monks established there and to continually raise up, honor, and exalt the holy place of the Church of Juvavum with love, honors, and dignities. And when he had instructed his son with commands of this kind and with all that he had wished, he closed his last day, departing to the Lord. After this, Duke Theopert set out with his nobles to visit St. Rudbertus, and coming to him in the above-mentioned wilderness, he venerated the place with pious affection, giving to the church which St. Rudbertus had built there -- and which in the presence of the Duke he dedicated in honor of St. Maximilian -- three miles of the same forest on every side, and the estate of Albina with other gifts for the sustenance of the monks whom that most holy Bishop Rudbertus had placed there to serve God.

[9] When these things had been accomplished, the man of God, seeing that the summit of Bavarian dignity had submitted itself to the yoke of Christ, but that many still remained entangled in the error of paganism, St. Rupert brings twelve companions from his homeland returned to his homeland, and from there, with twelve companions chosen for preaching (among whom were the eminent Kuniald and St. Gisilarius, both Priests, both holy men), and bringing with him the virgin of Christ, St. Erndruda, his kinswoman, he returned to the city of Juvavum as if with so many luminaries. with his kinswoman Erndruda, for whom he founds a monastery Then in the upper fortress of the same city he built a monastery in honor of our Lord Jesus Christ the Savior and of his Holy Mother, the perpetual Virgin Mary, and there with a congregation of holy women he placed St. Erndruda in the service of the heavenly King; and with the assent of Duke Theodebert, who granted boundless possessions to that monastery, he arranged their manner of life in all things reasonably.

[10] When these things had thus been accomplished, this blessed man, striving with the help of the Supreme Pontiff to bring to completion the work of great preaching he had begun, he traverses the Norican lands determined to travel through the Norican realms, accompanied by the company of his disciples; and going forth from the city of Juvavum and visiting the peoples to whom the light of faith had not yet shone, he sowed among them the wheat of belief while the tares perished. For from their barbarous hearts, having driven out the diabolical guests of deception, he introduced there faith, charity, mercy, and humility, through which Christ, the bestower and source of all good things, is accustomed to enter peaceably the dwelling of the human mind. And when he had thus traveled through the territories of the Bavarians and had converted all to the faith of Christ, and the Bavarians he admonished them to remain steadfast in the faith; and having left there Priests and men full of God, who would accustom the people to the divine mysteries, he himself hastened to return to the city of Juvavum, because, filled with the prophetic spirit, returns to Salzburg he foreknew that the day of his calling was at hand, which he foretold to his disciples; who, stricken by so sad and grievous a report, wept with great sorrow over why he would desert them and so young a Christian people.

[11] But he, with hope raised up to Christ, commended the city of Juvavum and the people of the Noricans and all those converted to the faith of Christ to Almighty God Most High, he predicts his own death and chose the holy man Vitalis, acceptable to all the people, to be his successor. When indeed the days of the Lenten observance were being kept, Rudbertus, the man of God and Bishop, began to be exhausted by the burning of fevers. And when the most holy day of the Resurrection of our Savior Christ had dawned, and dies piously he celebrated the solemnities of the Masses, and fortified with the most holy viaticum of the Body of Christ, after the sweetest admonitions of paternal affection and those final words of his mellifluous charity, confirming his dearest brothers and sons, amid the holy hands of those weeping, amid the pious sobs of those lamenting, he rendered his most pure soul to God; and choirs of Angels were heard in heaven by certain devout men, who carried the holy soul with melodious voice to eternal felicity. And so he rested in such peace. For he whose life was praiseworthy and without reproach, his death was also most blessed; and as it is written, precious in the sight of the Lord was the death of this most holy man, whom the Angels bore to heaven. Psalm 115:15 Which was afterwards attested by frequent miracles; for God deigned through the visitation of this holy man's body and through his intercessions to adorn his faithful and devout people and his Churches with innumerable miracles -- he who, blessed, lives and reigns, the triune and one God, and is illustrious in miracles to whom be praise and glory forever and ever. Amen.

LIFE II

From the Manuscript of Rouge-Cloitre.

Rudbertus or Rupertus, Bishop of Salzburg in Germany (Saint)

BHL Number: 7397

FROM MANUSCRIPTS.

CHAPTER I

St. Rupert, Having Set Forth as a Herald of the Faith to the Bavarians, Establishes a Church at Regensburg and at Lorch.

[1] The holy and devout Confessor of Christ, Rupert, was born from the noble and royal stock of the Franks; born of the royal Frankish line but he was nevertheless nobler in faith and piety. For he was a man prudent, meek, and truthful in his words, just in judgment, provident in counsel,

distinguished in charity and illustrious in every propriety of character, to such a degree that very many came to his most holy teaching and received from him the precepts of eternal salvation. and sought by Duke Theodo And as the fame of his holy way of life increased far and wide, it came to the notice of a certain Duke of Bavaria named Theodo, who began through distinguished envoys to entreat the aforesaid man of God with great prayers, as best he could, to deign to visit that province with his most sacred teaching. Whence the preacher of truth, moved by divine love, gave his assent, first sending his legates, then afterwards deigning to come in person to win a flock for Christ.

[2] Hearing this, the aforesaid Duke was filled with great joy, and going to meet him with his attendants, he received the holy man and Evangelical Teacher with all honor and dignity, he establishes the faith and a Church at Regensburg insofar as he was able and as was most fitting, in the city of Regensburg. The holy man at once began to admonish him concerning the Christian way of life and to instruct him in the Catholic faith; and thus he converted the Duke and many other noble men of that nation to the true faith, and baptized them, and confirmed them in the sacred religion. then at Lorch The aforesaid Duke therefore granted the holy man permission to choose a place suitable for himself and his followers, wherever it might please him, and to build churches there and to complete all other buildings necessary for the ecclesiastical work. Then the man of God, having received permission, set out on his journey by ship along the channel of the Danube, and at length arrived at the city of Lorch, preaching there the doctrine of the holy life, and there he healed many sick persons oppressed by various diseases through his prayers by the power of the Lord.

[3] Passing through the entire Alpine region, he came at last to the kingdom of the Carinthians ... and having preached Christ through Carinthia at whose entreaty he converted that kingdom and purified it with the baptism of Christ. And crossing the loftiest mountain, called Hard-Mountain, he preached to the Vandals, and achieved abundant fruit among them with the Lord's bounty; and he built many churches there and founded very many monasteries. Then, having left there disciples, Religious, Priests, and Clerics for the guardianship of the Christian religion, among the Bavarians he builds the church of St. Peter he returned to the land of the Bavarians. Having returned, therefore, he began again to travel through that province, whence, taking up his journey, he came to a certain lake called Wallersee, where he built and consecrated a church in honor of St. Peter the Apostle. Then the oft-named Duke there first granted him his own possessions in the surrounding area.

[4] Afterwards it came to the notice of St. Rupert that there was a certain place on the river Juvavum, called by the ancient name Vivarium, in which, during the time of the Roman Emperors, beautiful dwellings had been constructed, which at that time had been covered and hidden by forests. Hearing this, the man of God, desiring to see with his own eyes what the truth of the matter might be, for the sake of gaining faithful souls, and a monastery for men by the disposition of divine grace began to ask Duke Theodo to grant him authority over that place, for the clearing and purification of the sites, and for establishing there the Ecclesiastical Office as he could according to his desire. The Duke immediately consented, granting him possessions extending more than two leagues in length and breadth, so that he might do there whatever he wished for the benefit of the Church. Then St. Rupert began to renew the sites, first building a beautiful church for God, which he dedicated in honor of the most holy Peter, Prince of the Apostles; and then he built in every orderly fashion a cloister with other buildings pertaining to the use of religious men. Afterwards he established the Office for the Priests, and arranged that the Canonical Hours should be solemnly observed there each day with fitting devotion; and so St. Rupert, desiring to enlarge the properties for the service of God, thenceforth with God's help, through the donation of Kings and Dukes or the grants of faithful men, the possessions and properties began to increase.

* or Patavians

* read Wallersee

* alternatively Juvarus and Juvavium

CHAPTER II

Rupert Establishes Holy Women under St. Erendruda: the Pious Death of Both.

[5] But the man of God, seeing the flock of the Lord going through the precipices of vices out of the lust of women, prayed to the Lord in his heart saying: "Lord, he erects a convent for women if it is good in your eyes, I shall choose for myself certain persons apt for your worship and service, through whom not only women but also men may be drawn to the practice of the good life." Now he had in his homeland, namely in the city of Worms of the Vangiones, a certain noble kinswoman, a virgin consecrated to God from the earliest cradle, named Erendruda; desiring to summon her to himself together with other women of the same order and religion, Erendruda summoned to govern it he built a place and dwelling suitable for holy women in the fortress of Vivaria, and dedicated it to the Blessed Virgin. She, when all was completed, came at his summons and rejoiced greatly at the sight of Blessed Rupert, that she had merited to see him before the day of her death. Therefore the blessed Bishop led her into the oratory which he had already consecrated to Blessed Mary, and after this said to her: "Lady Sister, do you know why I have summoned you?" And she replied: "I know, Father, I know; for the Lord Jesus Christ has revealed it to me in the spirit, saying: 'Go in peace whither you are called. Behold, I will be with you and through you I will lead many souls of women to myself; when you have guided them by your example to the path of true religion, you shall come to me.'" Hearing these things, the most blessed Bishop gave thanks and returned praises to God with joy.

[6] After no great space of time, innumerable Virgins and noble matrons came to the Virgin Erendruda, a Virgin of outstanding holiness over whom she presided so discreetly that in a short time she presented them all so well instructed as to render them apt for the religious life and pleasing to God. For the virgin Erendruda herself was such in her character that she counted as her own gain whatever consolation any one of her disciples received from the gift of divine regard; she was such in her vow that she counted the salvation of all as her own; she was such in her countenance that whatever good or ill befell any person, she reckoned it as having befallen herself. What shall we record of the continence and abstinence of her life, of the generosity of her almsgiving, of the probity of her character, of the constancy of her vigils, and of every kind of sacred religious holiness? All of which, because they cannot be adequately expressed, should rather be omitted than pursued.

[7] At length, when Blessed Rupert had long beforehand foreknown his death, which had been divinely revealed to him, meeting with Blessed Erendruda he said: to whom he also predicts his death "Sister most dear to me, I have a secret word for you. I pray you, do not reveal to anyone while I am alive what I have resolved to disclose to you in confidence. Behold, by God's condescension my passage from this world has been revealed to me. And now I ask, Lady Sister, that you pray for my soul, that God may deign to place it in his rest." To whom the blessed virgin replied with tears: "If it is as you say, Lord, it is better for me that I should die before you." To whom the Bishop said: "Do not, dearest Sister, hastily and importunately desire your departure or passing, for it is a great sin; she prays that she may not long survive the Saint for our end is established not in our disposition but in the divine one." Then the most blessed Virgin, prostrate with tears at the feet of the Bishop, prayed to him saying: "Lord Father, remember, I beseech you, that you brought me here from my homeland, and now you wish to leave me wretched and orphaned. One thing alone I ask of you: that if I do not merit departure before you or with you, at least after your death I may more swiftly, by your intercession, merit to have the desired passage in the confession of the Lord." The most blessed Bishop Rupert assented to these prayers, and when they had for a very long time exchanged words about the sweetness of eternal life, bathing each other in mutual tears, they gave their last farewell amid sorrow.

[8] Therefore Blessed Rupert, on the day of the Lord's Resurrection, when he had celebrated the solemnities of the Masses in the sight of the entire Church and had proposed a sermon to the people, and had refreshed both himself and all with the most holy Body and Blood of Christ, having given peace and blessing, after his death when the Mass was ended, he prostrated himself in prayer, and when the prayer was finished, commending his spirit into the hands of the heavenly Father, he departed to the Lord on the sixth day before the Kalends of April. He was buried in the basilica of the Apostles Peter and Paul, which he himself had consecrated in their honor, and all the people of the Noricans mourned him because he had been the Apostle of that nation and had never saddened anyone by any word. After this, Blessed Erendruda, she too dies piously persisting in prayer night and day, devoutly offered prayers with tears to the Lord for the soul of her deceased kinsman, Blessed Rupert, keeping vigils of watchfulness and expecting the gift of the promised consolation. One night Blessed Rupert appeared to her in a vision and said to her: "Come, dearest Sister, into the kingdom of Christ, for which you have labored so long." Waking, she gave thanks to God and immediately began to fall ill. Having therefore summoned the Sisters, after words of exhortation, after receiving the most holy Sacraments of the Church, and after sweet kisses of charity, she yielded up her spirit. After this her sacred body, prepared with spices in the city of Vivaria, was consigned to burial with the greatest veneration in the monastery of Blessed Mary on the day before the Kalends of July.

* alternatively Juvaviensian