ON ST. PATTO, BISHOP OF VERDEN IN LOWER SAXONY.
NINTH CENTURY
CommentaryPatto, Bishop of Verden in Lower Saxony (Saint)
[1] Among the new bishoprics which Charlemagne the Emperor established after subduing the Saxons, one was given to the city of Verden on the river Aller, which not far from there flows into the Weser. The first Bishop was St. Suitbert, whose feast day is April 30. Hermann Crombach, a priest of our Society, the first Bishop of Verden was St. Suitbert: well known for various published books, has in his possession a Chronicle of Verden, received from the archive of the place, which begins thus: In the year of the Incarnation of the Lord 786, the Cathedral See of this Church of Verden was founded and established by the glorious Lord Charlemagne, in the nineteenth year of his reign, while Adrian I presided over the holy Roman Church, and Lullus over the Church of Mainz; and the city was subjected and entrusted to the blessed man Suitbert, the first Bishop of this place... He presided over the See of Verden for twenty-one years: he increased the number of the heavenly host in the year 807. he died in the year 807: The second Bishop was St. Patto the Scot, Abbot of the Church of Amorbach.
[2] These things are in the Chronicle of Verden, to which we add the following from Albert Krantz, book 1 of the Metropolis, chapters 21 and 22. The immediate successor of Suitbert, the first Bishop of Verden, was Patto, St. Patto the Scot succeeded him: a Scot by nation, formerly Abbot of Amorbach in his own province, who had gone on pilgrimage for Christ. When he had heard that Saxony, long stubborn against Christ and his Gospel, had now been compelled by arms by Charlemagne to listen to the true religion and Catholic truth: and as he was traveling in the province and strenuously preaching the word of God to the nations, Charlemagne, delighted by his zeal, ordered that he be placed at the head of the Church of Verden as its Bishop. But nothing has been handed down to us by the writers of his memory about the deeds he accomplished. Therefore we cannot guess at anything, except that we accept as certain and undoubted that he was a man of outstanding holiness, who, out of zeal for God, crossing the sea, cast himself into open dangers to his life, which he had to undergo by land and sea. Tanco, the third Bishop of that Church, since his predecessor had departed to the heavenly ones on the third day before the Kalends of April (for this alone out of all things we found recorded), succeeded him in the ministry of the Church, he died on March 30: himself also a Scot by nation, and Abbot of the same monastery of Amorbach in that province, succeeding Patto in both positions.
[3] So says Krantz: who in chapter 29 adds these things: And this Harruch, the eighth Bishop, was also a Scot, and Abbot of Amorbach. ... The annalist noted that the Relics of this Bishop and Lord Patto, the second Bishop in order, the relics were translated, and miracles performed: 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 virtues were seen among the sick. The matter, he says, is ancient and almost forgotten, and therefore the years of the Lord's Incarnation are not recorded. I have set down the words of the annalist in good faith. The fact that the Relics are said to have been brought into the church shows that they had lived and died elsewhere than in the Church of Verden, perhaps at Konende, which was the first site of the established parish church. For that diocese extends far to the East, through the territory of the jurisdiction of Luneburg, all the way into the March of Brandenburg. These are all from Krantz. In a manuscript Catalogue of the Bishops of Verden, it is said that under Harwich, St. Tanco and St. Patto were canonized by the Supreme Pontiff, their canonization is reported to have been performed: being renowned for miracles.
[4] Antonius Monchiacenus Demochares (whose authority Baronius often uses in his Notes to the Roman Martyrology) in his Catalogue of the Bishops of Verden, he was considered a Saint: among the first eight Bishops, who are regarded as Saints by many, honors with that title only SS. Patto, Tanco, and Harruch, who were Scots and formerly Abbots of Amorbach or Amoricum. But Gaspar Bruschius, writing of the Bishops of Germany, among these first eight Bishops of Verden, attributes the title of Saint to Patto alone. Meanwhile in veneration St. Suitbert the first Bishop takes precedence, at whose feast day in the Proper Offices of the Saints of the Church and Diocese of Osnabruck, published by order of Francis William, Bishop of the Churches of Osnabruck, Regensburg, Minden, and Verden, and afterwards Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, the following is read in the fourth lesson at Matins: When Suitbert, full of days, at last departed to the Lord, leaving as his colleague St. Tanco (or rather, according to others, St. Patto) as successor in the Episcopal See. The bodies of these, as well as of six other holy Bishops of that Church, his body was elevated: in the year of Christ one thousand six hundred and thirty, on the sixth of the Ides of March, Francis William, Bishop of Verden, when he was preparing to restore that Cathedral to a better form, found them and transferred them to another place. But because that city with the adjoining territory was to be handed over to the Swedes on account of concluding peace, the sacred relics of those holy Bishops are said to have been transferred elsewhere, where they might be venerated according to the Catholic rite.
[5] Aegidius Gelenius in his Fasti of Cologne has these words for the third of March: Of St. Patto the Scot, who was given by Charlemagne as Bishop to the Church of Verden. his name inscribed in various Fasti: Again on this March 30: Likewise of St. Patto, the second Bishop of Verden. But because he is called a Scot, a controversy arises between the modern Scots and the Irish, each claiming him for their own homeland. Fitzimon and Colgan claim him for Ireland, and Colgan tries to substitute the monastery of Armagh. On the other hand, he is ascribed to present-day Scotland by Leslie in book 4 of Scotland under King Fergus III, by Camerarius for this day, and by Dempster for the following day and in his Ecclesiastical History of the Scottish nation, where he attributes to him a Commentary on the Pentateuch of Moses. He is also referred to on this day in the English Martyrology and in the general Catalogue of Ferrarius. Finally, because he is reported to have been an Abbot in Scotland, Wion, Dorgane, Menard, and Bucelinus also celebrate him: as if at that time all monks and Abbots, even in Scotland and Ireland, had been Benedictines, which cannot easily be proved.