Utho

ON BL. UTHO, CONFESSOR, ABBOT OF METTEN NEAR DEGGENDORF IN LOWER BAVARIA,

PERHAPS IN THE YEAR DCCCXXVIII.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Utho, confessor, abbot of Metten in Lower Bavaria. (B.)

BY J. B.

§ I. The sacred memory of the Blessed One, and his deeds up to the founding of the monastery of Metten.

Henschenius promised in tome 2 of January, at the XXVII day of that month, when he was treating of St. Gamelbert, a parish priest in Bavaria, Blessed Utho, only by more recent that Blessed Utho, his disciple, would be treated in our Work at the III day of October: but what befell Henschenius when about to treat of the master, namely that he did not find his name in our Martyrologies, the same has befallen me when about to treat of the Disciple, whose name likewise is not read inserted, at least in those Martyrologies whose authority and esteem are greater on account of antiquity. It will be enough, therefore, to have enumerated some more recent Martyrologies or Menologies. Ménard, in the Benedictine Martyrology at the III day of October, records Utho in these few words: "In the monastery of Metten, of Blessed Utho, abbot": he has a little more in the Observations, and there calls him not Blessed but Saint. Bucelin is more lengthy, in the Menology of the same order at this

day: "In the monastery of Metten," he says, "of Blessed Otto, abbot. Uttho or Utho, an Italian by nation, having left his fatherland for the love of Christ, came as a pilgrim into Germany. There, having found St. Gamelbert as master, he advanced in remarkable holiness of life, and was set by him over the parish of Michaelsbuch, where Gamelbert had laid the foundations of the Christian religion; being afterwards compelled to withdraw from there by the Bavarian war, he (Gamelbert) built for himself a little cell in the place which is called Metten, set Utho over it as abbot, and named it in honour of Michael the Archangel. When afterwards Charlemagne, God so ordaining, had come there while hunting, having conversed with the holy Old man, and captivated by the sweetness of the heavenly colloquy, in his favour he built there an illustrious monastery of our Order, over which he wished Utho to preside. The Abbot, most worthy of the place, presided most holily, and, many disciples having been gathered there and most skilfully instructed to all perfection of the religious life, full of days and merits, he departed with a happy end on this very day in the year of Christ DCCCXXIX: made illustrious after death by a remarkable glory of miracles, above all by an everlasting continuance of divine benefits, especially in the spring which is called Utho's, into which, if those killed (read, infected) by the Neapolitan plague are immersed, they recover the desired health." These things Antonio de Heredia copied from Bucelin in almost as many words, but Spanish, in tome 3 of the Lives of the Benedictine Saints. The Universal Martyrology of Chastelain praises Utho thus at the III day of October: "In Bavaria, St. Uto, an Italian, disciple of St. Gamelbert."

[2] known, and in some manner Chastelain certainly judged, when he attributed to Utho the title of Saint, either that his cult could not be called in doubt, or that he had enjoyed that name among his own people from time immemorial: for he says in the Advice prefixed to the Martyrology that he made it a matter of conscience to add a title of this kind only to such Saints. Mabillon, however, in part 2 of the IV Benedictine Century, included Utho in the index of the Saints omitted; was it because he does not judge that he was a pupil of the Benedictine Order? I indeed do not think so. Was it because he judges that his Life is sprinkled with errors and fables? This he certainly hints in book 26 of the Benedictine Annals, number 20, where, treating of the origin of the monastery of Metten, or Mettensis, and of its founder Utho, he writes this: "This is the origin of the monastery of Metamum, commonly Metten, such as could be gathered from little tales of this kind." Many others also call him Saint or Blessed; as Hund, On the Foundation of the monasteries and colleges throughout Bavaria, Martin in the Relics of the desert, Rader in Holy Bavaria, Calles in the Ecclesiastical Annals of Germany, and others. For the rest, the things which are read in the cited and other authors about the cult of the Blessed One are few and very meagre. Most of them mention a certain spring situated not far from the monastery of Metten and called St. Utho's. Aventinus, book 4 of the Annals of the Bavarians, page 330, affirms that St. Gamelbert (whom he calls Amalbert) and Blessed Utho were venerated at Metten in his age. "They," he says, "are still religiously venerated there." And that the spring to which St. Utho gave its name was accustomed to be celebrated by the pilgrimages of the faithful both others assert and especially Stengel is witness, in the book On certain remarkable Benedictine Monasteries throughout Germany, from whom I excerpt what follows: "In the time of Ulrich, the I abbot (of Metten) of this name, the concourse of men to the miraculous spring of St. Utho began, in the year MCCCVI… Under the rule of Abbot Oswald (who entered in the year MCCCCLXXXXV and died MDXV), the pilgrimage to the miraculous spring of St. Utho flourished, and many strangers were freed by its benefit from the French disease. The plague soon followed this pilgrimage." Two Oswalds, each abbot of Metten, are recorded in the cited Hund, of whom the one ruled the abbey 9 years, 4 months, and died in the year 1503; and the other, the immediate successor of the former, ruled the same abbey XI years, one month, and died in the year 1514; and so those authors cannot be reconciled with each other: however that may be, it at least seems to be made out from this that the spring of St. Utho was celebrated by the concourse of the Christian people for about two centuries.

[3] These few things about the ecclesiastical cult of the Blessed One have hitherto become known to us, his cult in Bavaria, and we shall give more if ever we are more amply instructed on that matter. Rader presents his Life in tome 3 of Holy Bavaria from the Chronicle of Metten and the catalogue of the heads of the monastery attached to it: this we shall publish in print as it exists in him, and shall compare it with the relation of Wolfgang Selender, likewise printed in Rader, as also with the things which are related of Blessed Utho in the Life of St. Gamelbert given among us at the XXVII day of January. That Mabillon did not make much of it his words cited at the preceding number betray: and, as it appears, not undeservedly. For its author was neither well instructed by ancient documents nor so near to the time of the things he narrates as to win much credence for himself. The first indeed he himself confesses when he says: "How long this good Father sat in the abbacy, of which he himself was appointed first abbot by the emperor Charlemagne, has been recorded in the annals by no one, or if it was recorded, it certainly perished again in the tumults of war and was reduced to ashes." And the second is gathered from what he records about the spring of St. Utho, in which the disease called by some French, by others otherwise, is driven out of the bodies of the sick by the help of the Blessed One; since those things are later than the year 1306, in which the faithful began to flock to that spring, if Stengel, praised in the preceding number, writes the truth.

[4] The year of Utho's birth is left to divination: about what time he was born his Acts and those of St. Gamelbert relate indeed that he was cleansed in the sacred waters by St. Gamelbert on a Roman journey; but in what year that pilgrimage took place no mark of the times teaches, nor is the opinion of the authors the same. The anonymous author of the Life of St. Gamelbert among us, chapter 2, number 10, writes that he had already exercised the priesthood for fifty years when he took up the Roman journey. And since it was provided by the laws at that time that no one should be ordained presbyter unless he were thirty, or at least twenty-five years old, namely if men of more advanced age were not found suitable for that office, and necessity so demanded, as Pope Zachary wrote back to St. Boniface about the year 751, as can be seen in Serarius, Affairs of Mainz, book 3, page 262; according to that author it is necessary that Gamelbert counted 80 or 75 years when he gave himself to the Roman journey. To Wolfgang Selender and Adlzreiter, part 1, book 8, number 26 of the Annals of the Bavarian nation, he was a septuagenarian. Brunner, On the Virtue and Fortune of the Bavarians, part 2, page 42, affirms only in general that he visited the thresholds of the Apostles when already of great age. But Rader, as Henschenius notes, seems to have judged that that journey was undertaken by St. Gamelbert not long after he was initiated into sacred orders; for thus he has of St. Gamelbert: "And he turned himself wholly to divine things, and, having been initiated into sacred orders, set out for Rome." Since, therefore, both the year of Christ and the year of Gamelbert's age in which he made for Rome lie hidden, nothing certain may be concluded from this for the year of Utho's birth: nor yet from the year of Gamelbert's death, about which he transferred the care of the parish of Michaelsbuch to Utho, now become a man, and so about thirty years old; since this is no more ascertained than the year of the Roman journey in which he cleansed Utho, newly born, in the sacred font. But the Chronicle of Metten opens some way of assigning in some manner the year of Utho's birth, at least by probable conjecture.

[5] is investigated. For if we listen to it, Utho was already a bearded old man when Charlemagne found him in the solitude of Metten. This meeting of Charlemagne with Utho, already an old man, took place, according to the same Chronicle, when affairs in Bavaria had again been pacified, and Tassilo, already many times rebellious, had been sent under the yoke, when the victorious Charles was giving his attention to hunting: Tassilo indeed was captured and deposed, as the Chronicle of Fulda has it, in the year 788, and Charles was in Bavaria in the same year, as the short Annals of Regensburg in Mabillon, tome 4 of the Old Analecta, page 476, report; but affairs in Bavaria were not yet pacified on that account: for the Huns, although Tassilo had been stripped of the duchy, having been called into Bavaria already before against Charles at his request, continued to stir up disturbances there, and Charles had to contend with them in arms once and again in the same year: "But the Huns," says Einhard in du Chesne, tome 2 of the Writers of Gaul, page 245, "as they had promised Tassilo, having prepared two armies, attacked with one the march of Friuli, with the other Bavaria, but in vain. For in both places they were conquered and put to flight: and, many of their men having been lost, they withdrew to their own places with great loss. As if to avenge this injury, they made for Bavaria again with greater forces: but, driven back by the Bavarians at the first encounter, and an innumerable multitude of them having been slain, many also of those who, trying to escape by flight, wished to swim the Danube were swallowed up by the whirlpools of the river." And he subjoins after a few things: "But the king, having set out into Bavaria, ordered and disposed the same province with its borders: and returning from there, he celebrated in his palace at Aachen, where he had wintered, both the Lord's Nativity and holy Easter in solemn fashion."

[6] Baptized by St. Gamelbert, and having grown older, Accordingly, this year, in which Tassilo was stripped of his dominion, in which Charles subdued the Huns joined to him by treaty, and himself personally disposed Bavaria, is not wholly unfit to which the meeting of Charles with Utho may be tied; especially since neither in the remaining part of this year nor in the following was there any warlike tumult in Bavaria, as the same Einhard testifies: but another year a little afterwards occurs to which the same event may be tied equally aptly; that is the year 792, in which Charles, having returned the Huns their due and traversed and laid waste a great part of Pannonia, settled at Regensburg; from which, since the solitude of Metten is not much removed, it could indeed easily have happened that while hunting he came there, whether by chance or by divine leading, and fell in with Utho there; the neighbourhood of both places especially suggesting it. And for that reason the meeting of Charles with Utho is referred to this year by Le Cointe, Mabillon and Bulteau in the Compendium of the History of the Benedictine Order at the beginning of tome 2. Further, since the Chronicle of Metten asserts that Utho was at that time a bearded old man, if we give him about 60 years (for his Life, protracted to the year 828, if what most write is true, does not permit many more to be granted), Utho would have been born in about that space of years which elapsed from the year 728 to the year 732, and would have died a centenarian or nearly a centenarian; although, as we said above from Stengel, it is by no means established about the year of his death. And he would have taken up the administration of the parish of Michaelsbuch about the year 762. The year of Blessed Utho's birth has therefore been defined in some manner; but would that on a more solid foundation: meanwhile we shall readily yield if anyone brings forward things either more certain or more probable.

[7] Nor is the fatherland of the Blessed One better explored than the year of his birth. For he is generally called an Italian, he is set over the parish of Michaelsbuch, but of what place he was no one would declare with certainty. The anonymous author of the Life of St. Gamelbert writes only that Utho was baptized by him on the Roman journey; Brunner, on the return and departure from Italy: Adlzreiter, Le Cointe and Mabillon have done the same; but the Chronicle of Metten, and from it Stengel, say that this was done at Rome, and by chance: others add, in a lodging to which Gamelbert had perhaps turned aside, and in the absence of the parish priest of the place; which last, if it is true that Utho was dipped in the sacred water at Rome, seems to me less probable on account of the greater abundance of ministers of sacred things living there. How Utho spent his youth is indeed hidden; yet there seems to be no reason whatever to doubt that he was cultivated both in letters and in pure and holy manners; inasmuch as St. Gamelbert, inspired by a prophetic spirit, had foretold to his parents that he would one day succeed him, and for that reason had earnestly commended to them the pious and holy instruction and education of the Boy. He had admonished them besides that, when Utho had reached manly age, they should send him to him: and lest they should be ignorant whither he was to be sent, he indicated the place of his dwelling. So the author of the Life of St. Gamelbert: but these things seem indeed to have been hidden from the author of the Chronicle of Metten. For he describes Utho's coming to Gamelbert as though he had fallen in with him merely by chance: "This Utho," he says, "when he had reached manly age, having left Italy, his fatherland, himself also went on pilgrimage for the sake of religion into that part of Germany situated on the Danube. Where, when he had come to St. Gamelbert, he was humanely received by him and presented with that very parish of Michaelsbuch by the man of God, now a decrepit old man." Thus, namely, it usually happens that, while more recent writers, destitute of suitable testimonies, treat ancient and hidden things too freely, they not rarely go off into contrary directions, and speak rather from their own genius than from the truth of the matter.

[8] It was not permitted to Utho, after he met Gamelbert, whether by arrangement having left which, into the solitude of Metten or by chance, to enjoy his master long: for thus it is read in the Life of St. Gamelbert: "Having called together his friends and subjects, St. Gamulbert addressed them with such words: 'Now, brethren and dearest sons, we have received the Promise of the Lord. Know that this is beyond doubt the Man whom I had foretold to you a year before would come; him the Lord has given me as heir; he wills him to be your shepherd. By just law indeed is he to succeed me whom I begot as a son to Christ and holy Church through baptism. Observe him with the utmost diligence, apply the ears of body and soul to his admonitions, who will be able to lead you, if obedient, to the kingdom and rest which will have no end.' These things said, he handed over all his goods to him, and employed all who were present as witnesses of this handing over. And not long afterwards, overtaken by a grave infirmity, he fell into bed, about to send back his well-served soul to the Lord after the struggles of the world." Yet Gamelbert was not snatched from human affairs so soon after Utho's coming, on the testimony of Selender, but that Utho was first initiated into sacred orders, probably under Anthelm or Anshelm, bishop of Lorch or Passau, who, on the testimony of Bruschius, On Passau, book 1, presided over the church of Lorch from the year 757 to the year 766. In what year this happened, however, is uncertain from what has been said before. And the parish committed by Gamelbert to Utho's care has the name Michelsbuch to this day, as if you should say Michael's beech. And Michelsbuch is a town of Lower Bavaria situated between the rivers Danube and Isar, not far from the place where the Isar rolls into the Danube.

[9] he goes away, and there founds a monastery And although Utho could not long enjoy the company of his master, snatched from this life shortly after his coming, he certainly drank in his spirit: accordingly, after his death he began to busy himself chiefly with this one thing, after his example, that he should in no matter be wanting in his duty; to give attention to preaching, to remove enmities, to extinguish hatreds, usuries, robberies; to apply correction and efficacious remedies according to his strength to sins whether public or private; finally to spare no effort or labour in order to keep the flock committed to him repaired and roofed on every side. And all these things indeed, as Selender says, proceeded prosperously enough for Utho: but to pluck out the fibres of inveterate superstition was a matter of far greater effort and contention, and succeeded less according to his wish. And since this was very grievous to him, leaving to another the care of cultivating a little-pleasing vineyard, he withdrew into solitude, to be free thenceforth for God and himself. If we follow this course of events, scarcely anything is at hand from which we could define at what time he said farewell to the parish of Michaelsbuch. But if we listen to the Chronicle of Metten, which refers Utho's withdrawal into solitude to those times at which the warlike hatreds and tumults between Tassilo, duke of Bavaria, and Charlemagne began to break out, it must have happened in that space of time which flowed from the year 763 to the year 788. For, on the testimony of Einhard, in the former year Tassilo, instigated chiefly by his wife Liutperga, the daughter of Desiderius, king of the Lombards, lately stripped of the kingdom of Italy by the arms of Charles, first began to fall away from Charles; and in the latter Tassilo paid the penalty of rebellion, and, deprived of all dominion, was thrust into a monastery. But if anyone admits with Selender that Utho was found by Charlemagne still occupied in building a little cell for himself, then, according to what was said at numbers 5 and 6, Utho's departure into solitude will have to be fixed at the year 788 or 792.

[10] founds. A vast solitude at that time lay along either bank of the Danube: Utho, having left the right bank of the Danube, went to the left, and there hid himself in a certain valley, not far from Deggendorf, a town of Lower Bavaria, overgrown with a dense grove, and built a tiny little cell near a spring (which for that reason they call St. Utho's), and wished it dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, either because he had experienced his help in the perils of the Bavarian war, or because he held him in special veneration. Charlemagne, brought here perhaps while hunting, met Utho's little cell, and, having addressed the man, moved by the Man's appearance and holiness, asked whether he wanted anything of him. Utho, prostrate on the ground, answered that it was his wish that a monastery should be founded there in honour of St. Michael for the salvation of very many: "To whose will," says Selender, "the most glorious emperor (then still Patrician of the Romans) soon assented, and immediately caused a celebrated monastery under the rule of the holy Father Benedict to be built from the foundations of cut and squared stone, which he enriched with many estates and adorned with most ample gifts." He adds that in the meeting of Utho and Charles this wonder happened, that Charles, when he was near Utho's cell, saw the Blessed One's axe hanging from a ray of the sun, and was astounded. Andrew, a presbyter of Regensburg, in Bernhard Pez, tome 4 of the Anecdota, part 3, page 446, also narrates the same. But there is no mention of this prodigy in the Chronicle of Metten, and it is called in doubt by Brunner, Adlzreiter and Le Cointe, these little phrases, "as is said," or others of the same force, being added.

§ II. The time of the founding of the monastery; the death of the Blessed One, and the vicissitudes of the monastery which followed it.

The monastery having been founded by him more probably about the year 792, What were the beginnings of the monastery of Metten, founded by the munificence of Charlemagne and the care of Utho, and that these are more probably to be tied to the year 792, has been said in the foregoing. Most of the authors already often cited refer the cradle of the said monastery to the same year: yet there are those, says Brunner, who put it off to other times: "but these," says the same, "are easily refuted by that most certain mark, that old charters record that these things happened when Charles was not yet emperor." The beginnings of the monastery of Metten will perhaps seem to be placed later by one reading the Catalogue of the Abbots of Metten presented by Gewold in his Annotations on Hund, where thus: "1. Utto, appointed abbot about the year of the Lord DCCCI." Adlzreiter removes this scruple when he affirms that the monastery of Metten may have begun to be founded in one year, and Utho may have been appointed its first abbot in another year: "For although," he says, "the structure of the monastery was begun while Charles was still Patrician of Rome and not yet emperor, yet Uto's headship could have been deferred to the year which followed his inauguration as Augustus; when, namely, he had now returned from Italy into Germany." To these I subjoin what the same author has about the error of Aegidius Albertinus concerning the monastery of Metten built by Charles and Utho set over it: "Manifest is the error of Aegidius Albertinus when, in the preface of the book of Hilaria which he dedicated to the abbot of Metten, he asserts that Charlemagne built the monastery of Metten in the eight hundredth" (add eightieth, as is read in Rader) "second year, and set Uto over it: for it is established that Charles yielded to fate in the fourteenth year above the eight hundredth, on the V Kalends of February." Hund says that there exists in the monastery of Metten a Diploma of Charlemagne given on the IV Kalends of August, "in the year, Christ being propitious, DCCCLXXXII, the II year of his Augustal (reign) in Italy, the I in France." On the contrary, Stengel writes that the diplomas of Charlemagne perished there. However that may be, it is certain that the year 882 does not agree with the second Augustal year of Charles, and that an error has crept into the years of Christ: for in the constitution of Louis the Pious of the year 817, among the monasteries which ought to give the emperor neither gifts nor military service but only prayers for the safety of the emperor or of his sons and the stability of the empire, there is explicitly counted the monastery of Mechema, that is, Methema or Methuma, commonly Metten, in Lower Bavaria, as Mabillon interprets in the Benedictine Annals, book 28. Likewise in Hund there is related a diploma of Louis, king of Germany, by which it is established that Charles, the grandfather of Louis, took the guardianship of the aforesaid monastery upon himself.

[12] whatever others Bruschius, On Passau, book 1, makes the monastery of Metten far older than is fitting. He writes thus of the origin of the Bavarian monasteries: "Under this same Vinilo" (prelate of Lorch and Passau) "very many monasteries were founded round about among the Bavarians, and first of all Upper and Lower Altaich on the Danube, Metten a little from the Danube above Deggendorf, Mondsee on the lake of Mond, and Osterhofen on the Danube, of all of which elsewhere. That venerable prelate Vinulo departed from this to the heavenly life in the year DCCXLV." And a little later, treating of Wiseric, bishop of the same see, among the abbots who were present at the synod celebrated, as he at least writes, in the year 768 at Dingolfing (it is a town of Lower Bavaria on the bank of the Isar), he inserts Oportunus of Metten. Whence Bruschius got this into his mind I do not know: but since he believed that the Oportunus who was present at the synod of Dingolfing was abbot of Metten, because perhaps he found that an abbot of Metten of this name succeeded Utho in the monastery of Metten, as in fact in the Catalogue of Hund a certain Oportunus is reported to have succeeded Utho; hence I am led to the suspicion that Bruschius, because he read the same name in both places, referred the foundation of the monastery of Metten to those times which preceded the aforesaid synod for some time.

He would perhaps have spoken otherwise if he had at some time completed, either in part or wholly, the second Century on the foundation of the monasteries of Germany, which he certainly conceived in mind. Meanwhile, however, I notice this, that among the abbots subscribed to the synod of Dingolfing there is indeed read in the very Acts of the synod an abbot Oportunus; but it is not expressed of what place he was abbot: whence perhaps only by conjecture, or following another author deceived in a similar way, he judged that this abbot was of Metten. Thus also Meibom, tome 3 of the Affairs of Germany, page 200, with Lazius as guide, went to the same opinion.

[13] contradict, Hund writes the same things as Bruschius about the erection of the monastery of Metten, tome 1 of the Metropolis of Salzburg, page 291: but he is not consistent with himself; for in the other tome of the same Metropolis, page 501, he has this: "Not far from Deggendorf and the Danube a monastery of the Order of St. Benedict is founded, according to Aventinus, folio 316, by Charlemagne, Utho, the hermit of this place, having been placed as first abbot." Here, therefore, he seems tacitly to subscribe to the opinion of Aventinus; although the latter says there only that the Caroline diploma, of which there was treatment at number XI, is preserved in the monastery of Metten. And at page 330 the same Aventinus says that Charles built a church for Gamelbert (and this indeed falsely, since St. Gamelbert always dwelt on the right bank of the Rhine) and for Utho, which he refers to those times at which Bavaria had already yielded to Charles. Hund certainly saw these things, and yet brought forward nothing by which he might either strengthen his former assertion or refute Aventinus. For the rest, that Oportunus who was present at the synod of Dingolfing was not the abbot of Metten but of Mondsee, who first held the helm of the monastery of Mondsee, founded about the year 739 or 748 by Utilo, duke of the Bavarians, and died, on the testimony of Hund, in the year 781 on the Kalends of January. So write Aventinus, page 302; Le Cointe, tome 6 of the Annals, at the year 777, number 31; Mabillon, tome 2 of the Annals, at the year 772, number 44; Meichelbeck, History of Freising, tome 1, page 70. To Welser and Brunner, to assign to each abbot subscribed to the synod his own seat seemed a doubtful matter, no suffrage of antiquity surviving, and several monasteries being already at that age scattered through Bavaria.

[14] How long Utho presided over the monastery of Metten, [he presides until the year 829 according to the catalogue of the prelates of Metten;] as the catalogue of the prelates of Metten cited at number 3 has it, no one has transmitted to posterity: it says only that he obtained a lofty tomb in the choir of the church before the principal altar, distinguished with this epigraph:

Here the first abbot Utho, nor lowest in praises, Lies here as clay, rests rich in the heavens.

From what source is derived what is read in Hund, page 502, namely that Utho presided as abbot over the monastery of Metten from the year 801 to the year 829, the III day of October, I have not ascertained: yet most of those whom I have seen write that he departed from life in this, or in the immediately preceding, year. A catalogue of his successors also, with the duration of government, the year and day of death assigned to each, can be seen in Hund; on whose testimony Oportunus succeeded Utho, Wolfram Oportunus, Emicho him, and finally (I pass over the rest who follow) Nithard Emicho; who was snatched from among the living in the year 880, after 14 years and 2 months of government. "But from the diploma of Louis, king of Germany, which Gewold inserted in his Additions to Hund," says Mabillon, tome 2 of the Annals, at the year 792, "it will be evident that the time of government of Nithard, and so of Utho and the subsequent abbots, is not rightly assigned in Hund." Further, Gewold says in the margin that this diploma of Louis is preserved uncontaminated and entire in the monastery of Metten.

[15] And Louis, king of Germany, grandson of Charlemagne through the emperor Louis the Pious, on which, however, who in the summer of the year 817 was presented by his father with a share in the kingdom of Bavaria and the title of king, gave it. The sum of the diploma is that Louis assigns his defence and patronage to the monastery of Metten, which his grandfather Charles had also done before him. This is its beginning: "In the name of the holy and undivided Trinity, Hludovicus, by the favour of divine grace king." And this the subscription: "I, Adalleodatus, deacon, have recognized in place of Brunaldus. Given on the VIII Ides of January, in the year, Christ being propitious, the fourth of the reign of King Louis in Eastern Francia, Indiction XV. Done at the city of Regensburg, in the name of God happily, amen." Closest to this subscription comes that which is attached to another diploma of Louis (except that in this the chancellor is more rightly called Grimald than Brunald) in Conring, On the Diploma of Lindau, page 39, and it runs thus: "I, Adalleodus, deacon, have recognized in place of Grimald. Given on the XIV Kalends of May, in the year, Christ being propitious, the III of the reign of the Lord King Louis in Eastern Francia, Indiction XIV. Read at Osterhofen, the royal palace, in the name of God happily, amen." And Hansiz, On the Bishops of Passau, ties this to the year 836; and consequently that is to be tied to the year 837: for although Louis in his diplomas used a manifold beginning of his reign, yet I am wholly persuaded that he here drew the beginning of his reign either from the year 833, in which, in the month of October, he and his brothers divided among themselves the dominions of their deposed father, although this is not approved by Le Cointe, or from the beginning of the following one.

[16] to rely much, For since the year of the given diploma is such that Indiction XV was then running, it must have been given in the year either 822, or 837, or 852, or 867: in which alone, during the reign of Louis, Indiction XV ran; for he died in the year 876. But, whatever other beginning of the reign of Louis be taken, its fourth year will never fall in a year with which, in the month of January, the XV indiction is coupled. On the contrary, if you lay down the beginning of his reign in the year 833, in the month of October, or 384, in the month of January, both the fourth year of Louis and Indiction XV will concur in the year 837, in the month of January. And the years from which it has pleased various authors, besides those cited, to take the beginning of the reign of Louis are these: 817 in summer, 821, 825 in the month of August, 826 or 827, 838, 840, 854. That what I said a little before is true will be evident to one who considers it. I add what is read about the epoch already asserted in the Notice on the diplomas of Louis, tome 8 of the Writers of Gallic Affairs, page 417: "When Louis Augustus, standards having been joined with his sons, in the year DCCCXXXIII, DESERTED AND BETRAYED BY HIS OWN, WAS REDUCED INTO THE POWER OF HIS SONS, as the Annals of Fulda relate, Louis, king of Bavaria, is believed to have seized the kingdom of Germany through those civil disturbances: hence the beginnings of his reign in Germany or Eastern Francia are taken in most of his diplomas. This epoch Anskar confirms in the book On the Miracles of St. Willehad: 'In the year,' he says, 'of the Incarnation of the Lord DCCCLX, and of the reign of our lord the most serene prince Hludovicus the XXVIII, Indiction VIII, miracles began to be worked divinely in the church of Bremen.' A charter, LXIV in Goldast, also confirms it, given on Friday the VIIII Kalends of December, in the XXIIII year of Hlodovicus the emperor, and the V of Hludovicus the Younger, king of the Alamanni. Which concur with the year DCCCXXXVII, which was the fifth of King Louis from the year DCCCXXXIII, begun namely from the month of October."

[17] it is not permitted. Of the formula which Louis used at the beginning of his diplomas, these things are had: "Louis, king of Bavaria, used this initial formula: In the name of our Lord J. C. God almighty, Ludovicus, by the favour or bounty of divine grace king of the Bavarians. Made king of Germany in the year DCCCXXXIII, he changed this formula in this manner: In the name of the holy and undivided Trinity, Hludovicus, by the favour of divine grace or CLEMENCY KING." And of the manner of subscription this: "Louis used the same manner of subscription as Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. Before his father's deposition he couples the years of his reign together with the years of his (father's) empire: afterwards he enumerates only the years of his own reign in Eastern Francia." Both characters are found in our diploma. These things, therefore, having been laid down about the year of the given diploma, it is clear that in the catalogue of the abbots of Metten the years of Nithard's government are not rightly disposed, which Mabillon had warned; and so that it may deservedly be feared that the years of the other abbots also, and of Utho himself, are recounted in an order and number not their own. For which reason at the beginning of this Commentary we wrote, but doubtfully, that Utho departed from this life in the year 828. In tome 4 of the Analecta, page 642, Mabillon presents the book of the confraternities of Reichenau, written, as he says, about the year 815 under Abbot Erlebald, in which this mention of Utho, abbot of Metten, is made: "From the monastery of Metama, Utto, abbot"; but of the living or of the dead? For although this book is said by Mabillon to have been written in the year 815, several are recorded in it who lived afterwards, and perhaps it began to be written first in that year, others and others being added successively: as, among others, King Henry, Queen Matilda, King Otto, who flourished in the X century, and are read inserted in the same book, show.

[18] After Utho's death peaceful times seem to have flowed for the monastery of Metten until the beginning of the X century, Afflicted by various in which Bavaria was worn down by the Huns or Hungarians with a remarkable disaster; which the continuator of Regino mentions in these words: "In the year of the Lord's Incarnation CMVII the Bavarians, having engaged with the Hungarians, were laid low with much slaughter, in which engagement Duke Luitbald was killed." And again a little after: "In the year of the Lord's Incarnation CMX the Franks, having engaged with the Hungarians on the border of Bavaria and Franconia, were miserably either conquered or put to flight. In which battle Count Gebhard perished." Finally also in the years 912, 915, 917 the Hungarians laid waste Alemannia, either in part or entire, with fire and sword, on the same testimony: and Coelestin Leutner, in the History of the monastery of Wessobrunn, page 59, writes that the monastery of Metten was involved in the same disaster. "The Chronicle of Niederaltaich also," he says, "complains that in the time of Abbot Aaron, if not in the year CMVII, certainly in CMX or CMXII, the monasteries of Bavaria nearer the East were laid waste, at Upper and Lower Altaich, Metten, Osterhofen and others."

[19] But the monastery of Metten received no smaller disaster from the collapse of monastic discipline, disasters, the monastery, by Henry as not rarely happens through the disturbance of the times, in the XII century; nay, it wholly ceased to be in the hands of the Benedictines, on the testimony of Stengel, and yielded to the secular canons of Münster (these have a college commonly called Pfaffenmünster, situated near Straubing not far from the Danube towards the mountains and forests of Bohemia), who inhabited it for some years. The monastery of Metten ceased to be in the hands of the Benedictines, according to Stengel, in the year 1134, Gerbert presiding. How Stengel says that this happened in the reign of Henry IV, long dead before the year 1134, I do not understand. The catalogue of the abbots of Metten in Hund differs from Stengel, which has thus: "Gebehard, 16 years, 2 months. Died 2 February in the year MCIX. Gebehard having been taken from among the living, the canons of Pfaffenmünster held the monastery of Metten

for L years. But Henry, the I duke of this name, removed these in the year MCLVII and restored the monks." Then indeed it records Berbert (I think he is the same who to Stengel is Gerbert), whom it writes presided over the monastery of Metten, now restored to the Benedictines, for 23 years, 2 months, and ceased to live in the year 1181: whereas Stengel testifies that he nowhere found recorded in letters or monuments who held the helm of that place when the monastery was restored to the Benedictines. That the credibility of the cited catalogue is not great I have already said above; but neither shall I give sure credence to Stengel when he asserts that the said restoration was made in the year 1157, although the Hund catalogue also agrees with Stengel.

[20] For that Henry, whom the religious of Metten hold in the place of a second founder, by (Henry) margrave of Austria, was the last of the Margraves of Austria; to whom in the year 1142 the emperor Conrad transferred the duchy of Bavaria, Henry the Proud, who had rebelled against him, having namely been previously removed from his place. Henry of Austria held this from the death of his brother Leopold, although not peacefully enough, until the year 1155 or 1156, in which Frederick Barbarossa restored the duchy of Bavaria by right of return to the other Henry, son of the Proud: but, since it did not seem fair to Barbarossa that the Austrian should lack the title of duke, he raised the margraviate of Austria into a duchy, adorned it with singular prerogatives, and extended its limits, that tract of lands being added to Austria which lies between the rivers Inn and Enns. Since, therefore, from the year 1156 Henry of Austria had no right in the remaining part of Bavaria, and the monastery of Metten is situated in it, it is less likely that the Benedictine monks were restored to their ancient seats by Henry when already duke of Austria, and it seems to be more rightly referred to that space of time which intervened between the year 1142 and 1147, in which Henry set out for the holy war, or to that which flowed from the year 1149, in which he returned into Germany, until 1156: on which matter the Chronicle of Melk, by Fr. Anselm Schramb, writes thus, page 63: "Henry, the II of this name, the VIII margrave of Austria, called by the surname Jasomirgott on account of a proverb familiar to him: 'Ja so mir Gott.' Substituted for his brother Leopold in the year MCXLII, he associated to himself in marriage the widow of the proscribed Henry, duke of Bavaria, Gertrude, daughter of the emperor Lothar, who however closed her day in the following year MCXLIII. By these nuptials he brought it about that the duchy of Bavaria was restored to him with the consent of Caesar Conrad, Welf opposing, whom he found a restless rival, but whose attempts he crushed in successful skirmishes. At which time, heir of ancestral piety, he restored the monasteries of Schliersee, Schlehdorf and Schäftlarn, founded Neustift near Freising for the Premonstratensians, and handed over Metten to the Benedictines. As the year MCXLVII was passing, the expedition for the holy land etc."

[21] and is afterwards restored again by Otto, duke of Bavaria. The monastery of Metten received yet another disaster in the year 1236, in which, on the testimony of Stengel, it perished by fire, and lay devastated until the year 1064 (read 1264), in which it began to be raised from its ashes with the help of Otto, duke of the Bavarians, and at length, under Abbot Conrad, who is read in the often cited catalogue of Hund to have administered the monastery of Metten from the year 1275 to the year 1297, it was brought to completion by the munificence of the same Otto. Stengel cites a Fragment of a diploma of Otto, by which a three-year immunity from certain burdens is granted to the religious of Metten, from which one may gather who that Otto was whom he calls count Palatine of the Rhine and duke of Bavaria. In the Genealogical Theatre of Henninges, among the dukes of Bavaria and counts Palatine of the Rhine, there first occurs Otto, surnamed the Illustrious, father of Louis the Severe, duke of Upper Bavaria, grandfather of the emperor Louis IV. He had besides a son named Henry, duke of Lower Bavaria; who Henninges writes died in the year 1290, leaving three sons, Otto, Louis and Stephen. Bucelin, in part 2 of Sacred Germany, affirms that Otto the Illustrious rebuilt the monastery of Metten: but he is refuted, first from the fact that Otto the Illustrious made an end of living either in the year 1245 or in the year 1253, as others would have it; and so the times of this Otto and of the restored monastery do not agree; then from the fact that Otto in a diploma given in the year 1293 mentions his brothers Louis and Stephen; which fits Otto, son of Henry and duke of Lower Bavaria. If, however, the year in which the monastery began to be restored is rightly marked by Stengel, and the year of Henry's death by Henninges, it is necessary that Otto bestowed this benefit on the monks of Metten while his father was still living. Let these things said about the monastery of Metten suffice; about which let him who desires more consult the cited Stengel and Hund. There follow the Acts of Utho, as they exist in Rader, drawn partly from the Chronicle of Metten, partly from the Catalogue of the heads (of the house).

ACTS

By an anonymous author.

From the Chronicle of the monastery of Metten and the Catalogue of its heads.

Utho, confessor, abbot of Metten in Lower Bavaria. (B.)

By an Anonymous author.

Blessed Utho, baptized by St. Gamelbert, Metania or Medena, today Metten, a very ancient monastery of the Benedictine profession in Lower Bavaria ^a, situated in a pleasant place half a mile from the city of Deggendorf ^b, a little to the left of the descending Danube, by a lake or forest ^c, began to be built in the times of Charlemagne, the most Christian of all emperors and most munificent erector of churches ^d, about the eight hundredth year of Christ ^e. The true history of its origin runs thus. There dwelt in the solitude of this place, and in the wilderness of either bank of the Danube, still vast at that time, for governing the flock * of the parish of Michelzbuch, situated between the Danube and the Isar ^f, a certain pious and venerable old man, blessed Gamelbert, born of a noble family among the Bavarians ^g. He, having cast away the care of arms, and having at one time set out, not without a prodigy, for the sake of religion to Rome to the thresholds of SS. Peter and Paul, by chance baptized there ^h a certain infant, whom he surnamed Utho: the wise man foreseeing in spirit that he would one day succeed him in his paternal church ⁱ.

[2] This Utho, when he had reached manly age, having left Italy, his fatherland, and made parish priest of Michaelsbuch, then into the solitude himself also went on pilgrimage for the sake of religion into that part of Germany situated on the Danube. Where, when he had come to St. Gamelbert ^k, he was humanely received by him and presented with that very parish of Michaelsbuch by the man of God, now a decrepit old man. This Utho, therefore, also presided after the death of St. Gamelbert over the little people of this parish, still rude and little practised in Christianity: until at length, the warlike hatreds and tumults between Charlemagne and Tassilo, duke of Bavaria, breaking out ^l, the good Man was compelled, the parish having been deserted, to withdraw across the Danube flowing past, and to seek quiet and a safe refuge in the woods among the wild beasts. There, when he had wholly applied his mind to the eremitical life, the pious Father began to build for himself at the spring of his name ^m a very small little cell in honour of St. Michael, because in these tumults of Bavaria he had been preserved by the protection of the good angels and freed from the hand of the enemies.

[3] Affairs in Bavaria having been pacified again, and Tassilo, already many times rebellious, having been sent under the yoke, of Metten goes away, and there when the victorious Charles ⁿ was giving his attention to hunting, he came by chance, or rather God so ordaining, to this cell, and when he called the old man Utho, a bearded hermit, to his sight and conversation, understanding from his dress and speech ^o (which is usually a sure and by no means deceptive character and index) that he was a man of an upright way of life most praiseworthy according to God, having given him his right hand, he promises him help, and bids the Old man gather disciples. This monastery of the Benedictine profession was begun and founded at the expense of Charlemagne [p], of which the first abbot designated by the emperor himself was this Utho [q].

[4] in the monastery founded by himself he dies and is buried. St. Utho, a Roman by fatherland, having gone on pilgrimage into Germany, came to St. Gamelbert *, by whom he is first designated parish priest of Michelsburg. He, a little afterwards having escaped by flight in the tumults of war, built for himself a hermit's cell in the neighbouring grove across the Danube, at the miraculous spring [r] which the common people to this day name St. Utho's spring, in which those who are polluted by the French disease or Spanish scab, washing themselves, are cleansed: yet in certain years, which, being so healthful (as has been noticed by the farmers of this place), an epidemic and raging plague follows [s]. How long this good Father sat in the abbacy, of which he himself was appointed the first abbot by the emperor Charlemagne, has been recorded in the Annals by no one, or if recorded, it certainly perished again in the tumults of war and was reduced to ashes [t]. This Abbot is buried in the choir of the church before the high altar in a lofty tomb with such an epigraph:

Here the first abbot Utho, nor lowest in praises, Lies here as clay, rests rich in the heavens.

ANNOTATIONS.

touched upon, and transfers the cause of Utho's departure to the surviving remnants of idolatry, which Utho was labouring in vain to root out of the minds of his people; and that this was not greatly at odds with the condition and temper of those times is shown by the fifth law among those subjoined to the decrees of the synod of Dingolfing, celebrated by Tassilo not so very long before, for the people, which concerns what the Bavarians call Stapfsaken, in words in which we find idolatry from the ancient custom of the pagans: that henceforth the one who seeks a debt shall say no otherwise than this: "These things you have unjustly taken from me, which you ought to restore." But the defendant shall contradict: "I neither took this, nor ought I to make composition." When the debt has been demanded a second time aloud, let him say: "Let us stretch out our right hands to the just judgment of God"; and then let each of them stretch out his right hand to heaven. Stapfsaken, moreover, is a Saxon word compounded of Stap (statue) and Sac (cause), so that it means the same as a cause brought before an idol, or contested before an idol, as Spelman supposes in his Glossary.

p. More probably it began to be founded about the year 792, when Charles was patrician of the Romans.

q. About 800, in which Charles was crowned emperor of the Romans at Rome

r. The spring, therefore, does not have a natural power by which those washed in it are healed of the disease which is mentioned a little later.

s. Rader thinks that something is missing here: Stengel uses the same words: I consider that this sense should be accommodated to them, namely that after a series of some healthy years it was observed that a pestilence from time to time raged, whether this arises from a fault of the air or of the soil, or from any other cause whatever.

t. It is therefore not certain that Utho departed from this life about the year 829. From the death of Utho up to the beginning of the rule of Nithard, to whom Louis, king of Germany, gave a diploma in the year 837, about 36 years elapsed according to Hund's catalogue: if you subtract these from 837, the reckoning will fall back to the beginning of the ninth century, and Utho will have died some years after its beginning, if the catalogue rightly exhibits the years during which, between Utho and Nithard, Oportunus, Wolfram and Emicho presided over the monastery of Metten; and if you suppose the said diploma to have been given to Nithard when he had already been abbot some years.

* read: sitæ gubernaculum

* these and the following are taken from the Catalogue of the prelates.