ON ST. THECLA OF KITZINGEN, VIRGIN AND ABBESS, ON THE MAIN IN FRANCONIA,
About the end of the eighth century.
SYLLOGE.
Of her Cult and Deeds.
Thecla, virgin and abbess, at Kitzingen on the Main in Franconia. (S.)
BY C. G.
The Saint, in the more recent Fasti St. Thecla, who in the eighth century, summoned from England into Germany by St. Boniface, Apostle of the Germans, with certain other religious women, presided as abbess over the monasteries of Kitzingen and Ochsenfurt in Franconia, and rested there in a holy end, the Martyrologists, but not very ancient ones, vie in celebrating on various days; first of all Ferrarius in the General Catalogue of Saints at the 27th of September has briefly thus: In Germany, of St. Tecla, virgin and abbess. At the next following day, or the 28th of the same month, the Saint is commemorated; but she is not rightly, as has already been said there among those Passed Over, assigned to Britain by the author of our MS. Florarium, by Greven in the Auctaria of Usuard in Sollerius, and by Canisius in the German Martyrology, in which last it is read thus: Likewise in England, of St. Tecla, abbess, who was kinswoman of the aforementioned St. Lioba: but at this 15th day of October the same Saint, an abbess of the Benedictine Order, is inscribed both in the Benedictine Fasti composed by Wion, Ménard and Bucelin, and in the English Martyrology, in which she is adorned by Wilson with an elogium framed in this sense: On the same day, at Ochnofurt (Ochsenfurt) in Upper Germany, the deposition of St. Tecla, virgin and abbess, who, English by birth, and invited from the monastery of Wimborne in the county of Dorset into Germany by St. Boniface, bishop of Mainz, together with St. Lioba and St. Agatha (that this Agatha was not English but rather German is shown by Perier, volume VII of September At the 28th day of Sept., p. 755, no. 35.), was there instituted abbess of the monastery of religious virgins of Ochsenfurt, which the said St. Boniface had very recently built, where in great Holiness and sanctity of life she ended her happy days about the year of Christ 750. Whether this Martyrologist has well determined the time at which the Saint died, the reader will judge from what is to be said.
[2] commemorated, honoured today with ecclesiastical cult, What reason impelled Ferrarius and the other cited Martyrologists to record the memory of the Saint at the said 27th or 28th day of September I have not ascertained: she was deferred, however, by our Elders to this day, on which she was also inserted in the Roman Martyrology by Baronius in these words: In Germany, of St. Thecla, abbess; and she is still venerated with ecclesiastical office by the sons of the Benedictine institute throughout Germany, as I learn from Ignatius Gropp, a religious of the same institute and prefect of the library in the monastery of St. Stephen at Würzburg, who in volume IV of the Newest Collection of the writers and affairs of Würzburg, published in the year 1750 p. 194., says that the Feast of the same Saint is marked in the Benedictine Breviary on the 15th of October; but with what rite St. Thecla is venerated there, for lack of the Breviary cited by Gropp, I am not going to say. [In the Benedictine monastic Breviary indeed, printed at the press of the monastery of the B. V. Mary of Einsiedeln in the year 1756, besides the principal feast of St. Teresa, there is had with simple rite a memory of SS. Bruno, Bishop and Martyr, and Thecla, Virgin; and in the same place a prayer common to both is read.] I have also before my eyes a Breviary printed at Coimbra in the year 1607 for the Benedictine religious established in Portugal, in which at the same 15th day of October, at first vespers, there is had a Commemoration of our St. Thecla through the prayer Hear us, O God, from the Common of Virgins, and at Matins, after the first lesson, which is of St. Bruno, bishop and Martyr, there are read about her the remaining two lessons, drawn from the Life of St. Boniface written by Othlo, a monk of Fulda, in the twelfth century, also cited by Baronius today in the Notes, in which, in Mabillon, part II of the third Benedictine century, various persons of both sexes who laboured with St. Boniface in subjecting the peoples of Germany to the yoke of the faith are reported in this way: The holy prelate Boniface, therefore, preaching and baptizing in the regions of the Thuringians and Hessians, perceived that the harvest indeed was great, but the labourers few for instructing the multitude of believers; whence, sending into his province and homeland, he caused religious women as well as men, imbued with various knowledge, to come from there, and divided the burden of his labour among them, among whom the principal men were Burchard and Lull, Willibald and Wunibald his brother, Witta and Gregory: and the religious women, namely the maternal aunt of St. Lull, Chunihilt by name, and her daughter Berathgit, Chunidrut and Tecla, Lioba and Walburga, sister of Willibald and Wunnibald; but Chunihilt and her daughter Berathgit, very learned in liberal knowledge, were established as mistresses in the region of the Thuringians… * and Tecla he placed by the river Main in the places called Kihhingen and Ochsnofrut (that is, in the monasteries of Kitzingen and Ochsenfurt on the Main in Franconia), Lioba also he established at Bischofsheim, that she might preside there over a multitude of virgins.
[3] soon after her death, as the reasons adduced here St. Liudger, or Ludger, disciple and biographer of St. Gregory, enumerates only the disciples of St. Boniface, in our volume V of August At the 25th day of Aug., p. 258, no. 13.; and, having related briefly the fruit of the labours which St. Boniface brought back, he follows them up generally with these remarkable praises: Moreover in all these things he was not a little helped by his chosen disciples, after the master most illustrious preachers, and pillars of the church of God: each one of whom illuminated his city and region like the morning star rising with his examples and teaching. Then the same holy biographer, praising each one in particular, at last speaks thus of SS. Burchard and Wigbert: And two of them, Wigbert and Burghard, departed from the world before the master (St. Boniface). But they are not without the palm of their election, since they merited to precede the master to the heavenly kingdoms, and in their regions they are held and venerated as Saints of God by all who were able to know their life and their virtue with God. And although the said St. Ludger expressly praises only the disciples of St. Boniface, and makes no express mention of his women disciples and helpers, yet that these too flourished in remarkable holiness of life, and by name our St. Tecla illuminated Franconia with illustrious examples of virtues, and soon after her death was held for a Saint no less than the disciples of St. Boniface praised by St. Ludger, and honoured with religious cult at least in the very monasteries over which she was set, and so, that the same praises with which the disciples of St. Boniface are adorned by St. Ludger pertain also to her, is not to be doubted.
[4] persuade, honoured, probably beginning, Surely, just as it is certain that the encomia given by St. Ludger to the disciples of St. Boniface apply exceedingly well to SS. Lioba and Walburga, likewise reckoned by Othlo among the women disciples of St. Boniface, from what Perier has discoursed about the former in volume VII of September At the 28th day of Sept., p. 748., and Henschen about the latter in volume III of February At the 25th day of Feb., Life of St. Walburga, p. 511., so also I think St. Thecla cannot be excluded from the same encomia, who, I gather, was held among the principal women disciples of St. Boniface, and whose great fame of holiness flourished in the eleventh century, from the Supplement to
the Life of St. Boniface, published in volume I of June At the 5th day of Jun., p. 474, no. 4., whose anonymous author, a presbyter of Mainz, flourishing in the same century, commemorates only her and St. Lioba, the other women disciples of St. Boniface, and St. Walburga herself too, being omitted, saying: It happened that, compelled by necessity, he (St. Boniface) summoned religious women from his province, so that his clerics and the sons of the nobles might be nourished by them, and the ministers of the heavenly preaching be imbued. For Tecla he placed by the river Main, that in those places she might shine like a lamp in a dark place, that is, at Chizzingim… and also the virgin Lioba he established at Biscofolheim, a monastery having been built, who presided over a multitude of virgins in the same place, teaching by word and by life the little rule of right living. However the matter may be, that the legitimate cult of our Saint, which, as we saw above, she still obtains today among the Benedictine religious in Germany, and on account of which we give her a place in our Work among the other Saints of this day, is very ancient can be determined even from this, that on account of it alone (for very few of her deeds are known) she was probably inscribed in the sacred Fasti by the Martyrologists cited above, of whom the author of our MS. Florarium flourished about the end of the fifteenth century, and Greven about the beginning of the sixteenth, and that by other authors unanimously, by name indeed by Dempster in the Ecclesiastical History of the Scottish nation, Alford in the Annals of the Anglo-Saxon church, Mabillon in the Acts of the Saints of the Benedictine Order, and Castellanus, very sparing however in such matters, both in the Universal Martyrology, where he exhibits the text of the Roman Martyrology, and in the Index of Saints, she was distinguished without any hesitation with the title of Saint.
[5] before she came from England into Germany We could without doubt bring forward more striking testimonies about the ancient cult of St. Thecla if her Life had been written professedly, as were those of SS. Lioba and Walburga, the veneration of whom begun soon after their death their biographers especially attested; and because this was not done, few things also remain about her deeds, more to be disputed than narrated: a torch is carried before us in these by Rudolf, a monk of Fulda, the biographer of St. Lioba, from whose remarkable lucubration, published by Perier in volume VIII of September p. 761., as one almost contemporary with SS. Lioba and Thecla and consequently possessing great authority here, we shall set forth, and try to bring back in some fashion to chronological order, the things which we brought forward above at no. 2 from Othlo for our purpose. But that we may take our beginning from the very date of the Saint's coming into Germany: after the words of Othlo given at the cited number, this author, continuing the deeds of St. Boniface, relates that this holy prelate, by his own work as well as that of his companions summoned from England, converted very many in Germany to the Christian religion; that he signified their conversion, by envoys sent, to Gregory III, recently raised to the Pontifical see, which happened in the year 731; and so, if we follow Othlo, it will have to be said that SS. Thecla and Lioba and the others recorded by him came into Germany already before the said year 731, indeed already in the year 725, to which Baronius in the Annals referred their migration.
[6] to St. Boniface in the year, as here Besides Baronius, Othlo was also followed by John Trithemius in the elogium of our Saint which he exhibits in book III On the Illustrious Men of the Order of St. Benedict, and most recently by Eckhart, Commentarii de rebus Franciae Orientalis, volume I, and hence I think it came about that the former, in the compendium of the Annals, wrongly confused our St. Thecla with St. Hadeloga, the first foundress and abbess of the Kitzingen monastery, as Bolland, the parent of our Work, showed in volume I of February At the 2nd day of Feb., p. 304, § II., and that the latter, to be met below, denied that St. Hadeloga ever presided over the Kitzingen monastery: but what moves me not to assent to Othlo, and to judge that the coming of our Saint into Germany should be tied to the said year 725, is the very great authority of Rudolf, the biographer of St. Lioba, from whom we gather that Othlo inverted the historical order, and that the coming of both our Saint and St. Lioba into Germany must be fixed much later. For it is sufficiently certain that St. Boniface summoned SS. Lioba and Thecla into Germany for no other end than that, through virgins exceedingly practised in the religious life, he might bring the perfect observance of the rule of St. Benedict, which flourished in the monasteries of England, into the newly erected monasteries of Germany, and so that SS. Lioba and Thecla did not come into Germany except when certain monasteries of virgins had already been built; and it is established from Rudolf that the holy Apostle of the German nation, ordained bishop by Gregory II in the year 723 and sent into Germany, before he began to build monasteries, first summoned from England, by envoys and letters sent, clerics of various orders, and then, with these clerics as helpers, brought back such fruits that he acquired a Great part of Germany for Christ by salutary doctrine and the miracles of virtues, and the pagans, instructed in the faith, flew eagerly to the grace of baptism; but since St. Boniface had to sweat over this conversion of a great part of Germany to the faith not for 7 or 10, but more probably 20 or even more years, I judge that this holy prelate began to build monasteries of virgins only when the eighth century was already verging to its middle, and that therefore the coming of our St. Thecla into Germany is also to be placed about that time.
[7] is proved, 748, with St. Lioba Indeed, the time at which our Saint came into Germany Henschen determined still more nearly, in volume III of February, in the Preliminary Commentary on the Life of St. Walburga At the 25th day of Feb., p. 514, no. 18., writing thus: St. Walburga seems also to have been a kinswoman of St. Lioba … another kinswoman of St. Lioba, according to Rudolf, is St. Thecla. Wherefore we think it can be asserted by no improbable conjecture that SS. Thecla and Walburga came into Germany with St. Lioba. Henschen was followed by Pagi in the Critica of Baronius at the year 725, and by Le Cointe in the Ecclesiastical Annals of the Franks at the year 749, all judging that the women recorded by Othlo arrived in Germany together: and although this perhaps cannot be equally shown of some, yet we sufficiently gather that our Saint was the companion of St. Lioba migrating from England into Germany, not only from her kinship with St. Lioba, but also from this, that she, in the convent of Bischofsheim, as Henschen also says at the cited place, and as we shall prove below, after her coming into Germany led the religious life for some time under the government of St. Lioba: and then the said Henschen and also Perier in volume VII of September At the 28th day of Septemb., p. 752 prove that St. Lioba came into Germany in the year 748, and so the coming of our Saint into Germany must also be tied to the same year.
[8] came, It can indeed be objected to this opinion that Rudolf holds discourse only of St. Lioba passing from England into Germany, and that therefore this Saint on this journey of hers probably did not have other virgins as companions, Rudolf being silent about them: but, besides the fact that it can be said that this biographer, as Le Cointe has already observed, mentioned St. Lioba alone Because he is wholly occupied in describing her life, that Rudolf's silence by no means overturns our opinion, by which we judge that together with St. Lioba other virgins also, and by name our St. Thecla, came into Germany, is clear even from this, that the same biographer of St. Lioba writes that St. Sturm was sent by St. Boniface to Monte Cassino, That in the monastery which the blessed father Benedict instituted he might learn the regular discipline and the monastic life and manners, and become a disciple who was to be a pastor, likewise with no mention made of companions, whom, however, Eigil, his disciple and abbot of Fulda, relates in the Life of the same, Having prepared the things necessary for the journey, TAKING WITH HIM TWO BROTHERS, set out for Rome and Cassino. Moreover, since Rudolf calls St. Thecla a kinswoman of St. Lioba, and also her disciple (the words by which he does so we shall give below), he sufficiently insinuates that she went out from her homeland England not before St. Lioba, but rather with her. For the rest, I wished above all to inquire into the date of our Saint's coming into Germany, because from it very much help accrues for elucidating her few deeds, which I now approach.
[9] in the monastery of Wimborne, That St. Lioba was born of noble parents in England her biographer relates in these words: So her parents, English by nation, were indeed noble in family, and both zealous in religion and in the observance of the commandments of God. Wherefore we ascribe nobility of family also to her kinswoman St. Thecla, although meanwhile from what stock or of what parents she was begotten is unknown: it is also uncertain whether she was near in blood to St. Boniface, to whom St. Lioba was kin on her mother's side, as the same biographer relates, and as the virgin herself writes in a letter given to St. Boniface in this way: And also I commend to thee the memory of my mother … who, as thou knowest better, is joined to thee by the bonds of kinship, because Rudolf does not explain whether the bond of blood which joined SS. Thecla and Lioba took its origin from the side of the latter's mother or from the side of her father. But because, as the said Rudolf says again, St. Boniface sent envoys with letters into his homeland to Tetta, abbess (of the monastery of Wimborne), entreating that, for the solace of his pilgrimage and for the help of the mission enjoined on him, she would send him the virgin Lioba, it is very credible that our Saint, before she set out for Germany, led the religious life for some time with St. Lioba in the same monastery of Wimborne, built by St. Cuthburga, probably helped by her sister Coenburga and her brother Ine, king of the West Saxons, in that region which today we call the county of Dorset in England, and, being already excellently practised in regular observance, was thereupon also summoned by St. Boniface, or perhaps followed her kinswoman of her own accord.
[10] but not, as some will have it, Bolland suspected that the holy Virgin had earlier also laid the foundations of the religious life in the monastery of Barking together with St. Cuthburga, and then passed to the monastery of Wimborne with the same St. Cuthburga, writing thus in the Preliminary Commentary on the Life of St. Hadeloga in volume I of February At the 2nd day of Feb., p. 305, no. 7.: But perhaps that Thecla, helper of St. Boniface, was one of those virgins who, with St. Cutburga, as we shall say at the 31st of August on her Life, migrated from the monastery of Barking to Wimborne; for St. Cutburga was at Barking (which monastery St. Erkenwald, bishop of London, had built below London on the Thames for his sister St. Ethelburga) under the same
Ethelburga's mistress Hildelitha, formed in the monastic disciplines: then, when king Ine had built a monastery for her in Dorset on the river Stour, in a place which is thought to have been formerly called Vindogladia, now commonly Winburri and Winburnminster, she migrated there with other virgins. Someone might conjecture that Thecla was of their number, because at Barking too there was a nun of principal name, Thecla, and a little after some Thecla was sent from the monastery of Wimborne into Germany, conspicuous for holiness and knowledge of the religious institute. That some Thecla existed as a nun in the monastery of Barking together with St. Cuthburga the parent of our Work presently proves from the book On the Praises of Virginity, which William of Malmesbury expressly testifies St. Aldhelm dedicated to the nuns of Barking, and which is sufficiently clear from the name of the abbess Hildelicha or Hildelitha, put in place of St. Ethelburga in the rule of the monastery of Barking, as Bede writes, book IV of the Deeds of the English, chapter X, and the beginning of which book runs thus: To the reverend virgins of Christ, to be venerated with every affection of devout sisterhood, and to be glorified not only for the proclamation of bodily chastity, which is of many, but also for the grace of spiritual purity, which is of few, to Hildelicha, mistress of regular discipline and monastic conversation, and at the same time to Justina and Cuthburga, and also to Osburn, my fellow tribeswomen, to Altgida and Scholastica, glued together by bonds of kinship, to Hidburga and Berngida, to Eulalia and Tecla, harmoniously adorning the church with the report of holiness, Aldhelm, a sluggish worshipper of the cross of Christ and a suppliant home-born servant of the church, wishes the desirable health of perpetual prosperity.
[11] a nun at Barking But that this Thecla, the nun of Barking, is most probably to be distinguished from our Saint, the helper of Boniface, will easily be perceived by him who weighs the time at which the latter came into Germany, not yet then investigated by the said Bolland, together with the time at which St. Aldhelm wrote the book On the Praises of Virginity; about the time of the writing of this book Mabillon in the Acts of the Saints of the Benedictine Order, century III, Part I p. 300., thus speaks: Aldhelm further wrote this book after the synod by whose order he published the little work against the errors of the Britons, but before the year 705, in which, from abbot of Malmesbury, he was made bishop of Sherborne, and indeed, I think, rightly, both because St. Aldhelm at the beginning of the same book calls himself only a Sluggish worshipper of the cross of Christ and a suppliant home-born servant of the church, titles which he does not seem likely to have used if, writing this book, he had been adorned with the episcopal dignity, and because he commemorates St. Cuthburga among the nuns of Barking, who, as is shown by a letter of the same St. Aldhelm exhibited by Alford in the Annals of the Anglo-Saxon church, which is noted as given in the said year, already presided over the monastery of Wimborne in the year 705. Therefore, if that Thecla of Barking, who, when St. Aldhelm was writing the said book On the Praises of Virginity, seems already to have lived at least some years in the monastery of Barking under regular discipline, and consequently to have already then reached an age of at least 25 or even 30 years, were the same as our Saint, the helper of St. Boniface, whose coming into Germany we have tied to the year 748, she would have arrived at St. Boniface in Germany already almost seventy, or even more than seventy, which, although it could absolutely have happened, appears nevertheless wholly foreign to the appearance of truth.
[12] and then, after she had stayed for some time in the monastery of Bischofsheim Still older, on the said Hypothesis, would St. Lioba have come to St. Boniface in Germany, inasmuch as she seems to have been older than St. Thecla, and on whom, established as abbess in the convent of Bischofsheim, St. Boniface moreover imposed such a care over other monasteries of Virgins that these, with their particular abbesses, were subject to her as to a general Mistress: and indeed it appears sufficiently certain that St. Lioba, after her coming into Germany, was at once set over the monastery of Bischofsheim; but altogether otherwise must one think of St. Thecla, who, before she was set over the monastery of Kitzingen or Ochsenfurt, we draw out stayed still for some years at Bischofsheim, from the often-cited biographer of St. Lioba, Rudolf, who, relating that St. Lioba went to meet the people, trembling because of a most savage storm that had arisen and fleeing to the church, enjoined patience, promised security, and exhorted them to apply themselves to prayer with her, proceeds in this way: Then the whole people, not bearing the enormity of so great a terror, ran to the altar, and rouses the blessed virgin (St. Lioba) from prayer, to be set against the dangers, and first Thecla, her kinswoman, addressed her in these words: O Beloved, Beloved, in thee is the hope of this people, in thee the sum of our prayers consists. Arise therefore and invoke for us thy Lady, the Holy Mother of God, that by her intercession we may be freed from the danger of this storm.
[13] for some time Rudolf proceeds to narrate that that savage storm was wonderfully calmed by the prayers of St. Lioba, which does not pertain here, except in so far as our Saint seems to have cooperated with St. Lioba; I only observe that it is clear from Rudolf's narration that the proposed miracle of the calmed storm took place in the convent of Bischofsheim (for thither the people, struck by fear of the storm, and having hope in the prayers of St. Lioba, then set over the same monastery, seem to have fled), and so that it also follows hence that our St. Thecla was then an inmate of the same monastery. For if she had already then been set over the monasteries of Kitzingen or Ochsenfurt, each of which was distant about 8 German miles from Bischofsheim, she could by no means have run out to Bischofsheim to St. Lioba on account of the length of the journey, such a savage storm also preventing it: add also that the claustral observance would most probably have stood in the way of her going out of her monastery, which SS. Lioba and Thecla, as they had once been taught in the monastery of Wimborne, doubtless brought into the monasteries of Germany too, and which, as Rudolf testifies, was such in the monastery of Wimborne that Whatever woman, renouncing the world, had wished to be associated with their college, entered never to go out, unless a reasonable cause or one of some great utility existing sent her out with counsel, and that the mother of the congregation herself, when it was necessary to order or command anything of external matters for the utility of the monastery, spoke through a window, and from there discerned whatever the reason of utility required to be ordered or commanded. However that may be, certainly Rudolf in no way hints that our St. Thecla then came to Bischofsheim by chance from elsewhere, but rather it is gathered from his narration that she was present with St. Lioba as she wonderfully calmed the storm on no other occasion than that she was then leading the monastic life under her government in the convent of Bischofsheim.
[14] had stayed, What we have thus far proved from the Life of St. Lioba, namely that our Saint, after her coming into Germany, inhabited for no slight time the monastery of Bischofsheim, formerly situated in the diocese of Mainz on the little river Tauber, is abundantly confirmed also by the letter of St. Boniface, the 25th among the Bonifatian ones in Serarius the 22nd in Würdtwein, from which Perier transferred it into the Preliminary Commentary on the life of St. Lioba, and at the same time observed that the holy apostle of the Germans had the greatest trust in the prayers of SS. Lioba, Thecla and the other nuns of Bischofsheim, which he earnestly requests in the same letter, inscribed in this way: To the venerable and lovable dearest sisters Leobgutha and Tecla, and also Cynehilda, and to all the sisters to be loved in Christ dwelling with you, the salvation of eternal charity. And so, since our Saint Thecla was a witness of very many of the deeds of her kinswoman St. Lioba, and was very familiar to her, as I gather from the words of Rudolf adduced at no. 11, doubtless on account of the likeness of life and character, I easily bring myself to believe that she had a great part in rescuing from oblivion the illustrious deeds of the same St. Lioba, of which Some (says Rudolf) came to my knowledge from venerable men, who, having ascertained them by the faithful narration of four of her disciples, namely Agatha and Thecla, Nana and Eoliba, each according to the capacity of his understanding, as they were handed down to them, took pains to commit them to writing and leave them as an example to posterity.
[15] she was made abbess of Kitzingen From Rudolf's words just adduced, Bolland, the parent of our Work, raised a certain difficulty in the Preliminary Commentary on the Life of St. Hadeloga, no. 13, saying: Whether there were not two Theclas, one older, who is recorded as summoned from England with Lioba, and seems to have been her equal, if not superior … the other younger, a disciple of St. Lioba, may rightly be doubted; but since it is not to be doubted that Tecla, the companion of St. Lioba migrating from England into Germany, is entirely the same as she who in Rudolf is also called her kinswoman, and that she led the religious life for some time in the monastery of Bischofsheim under the government of St. Lioba, superior to her as in teaching, so also most probably in age, and so truly was, and could be called by Rudolf, a disciple of St. Lioba, I judge that two Theclas are not to be distinguished here, but that Rudolf holds discourse only of one and the same, our St. Thecla, who was the companion, kinswoman and disciple of St. Lioba coming into Germany, and afterwards devoted her efforts to collecting the deeds of her holy kinswoman. Further, we can also safely affirm of our Saint in particular what the said biographer of St. Lioba writes generally about the disciples of this holy abbess in this way: He (St. Boniface) established a monastery for her (St. Lioba) in the place which is called Biscoffsheim, where no small number of handmaids of God was gathered: who were instructed after the example of their blessed mistress in the studies of heavenly discipline, and profited so much by her teaching that many of them afterwards became mistresses of others, so that there were no, or only rare, monasteries of women in those regions which did not desire the teaching of her disciples. We can safely, I say, affirm that our Saint made such progress under the teaching of St. Lioba in holiness of life and regular observance that she was afterwards sought as abbess with willing votes by the nuns of Ochsenfurt, and after the death of St. Hadeloga by those of Kitzingen, over both of which monasteries Othlo writes that she presided.
[16] after the death of St. Hadeloga, and so Just as it is uncertain about what year the beginnings of the Kitzingen monastery are to be placed, so also it is unknown in what year its first abbess and foundress St. Hadeloga died, and our Saint succeeded her in the rule of the said monastery: Mabillon indeed says in volume II of the Benedictine Annals that she already in the year 750, when St. Sturm, returning from Italy, Seized by illness, as Eigil, abbot of Fulda, writes in his Life, was sick four weeks at the monastery of Chitzinga, presided over the same monastery, and Ignatius Gropp asserts that this is also read in the said Life of St. Sturm, Newest Collection of the writers and affairs of Würzburg, volume IV p. 165.; but neither did I find in the Life of St. Sturm published by Mabillon, century III, part II, any mention made of an abbess then presiding over the Kitzingen monastery,
nor could our Saint probably, who, as we have already seen, came into Germany to St. Boniface together with St. Lioba only in the year 748, and then, before she became abbess, inhabited for no small time the monastery of Bischofsheim under the government of St. Lioba, as we have proved alike from the Life of this holy abbess of Bischofsheim and from the letter of St. Boniface, have presided over the Kitzingen monastery in the said year, only two years having passed after her coming into Germany: wherefore it is much more likely to me that St. Hadeloga still presided over the same monastery at that time, and survived among the living for many years even after St. Sturm's return from Italy.
[17] not before the year 766. For although from the twofold Life of this holy foundress of the Kitzingen monastery, the one shorter, published among us in volume I of February At the 2nd day of Feb., p. 306., the other more prolix, or a certain diffuse encomium of the same Saint, brought into the Appendix after the same volume, we cannot certainly ascertain whether this St. Hadeloga, or, as she is called in the said encomium, Hadelauga, was still living after the middle of the eighth century, this is nevertheless sufficiently shown by a Charter of donation exhibited by Pistorius, book II of the Antiquities of Fulda, in which Charter Hahbert and his wife Hruada are said to hand over Into the hand of Styrme, abbot, and into the hand of Hruadlauga, abbess, half of their goods in Geltresheim and Hengistorpf to the house of St. Boniface the Martyr, or the monastery of Fulda, and the other half To the house of St. Mary; that is, says Eckhart, Commentarii de rebus Franciae Orientalis et episcopatus Wirceburgensis volume I p. 587., the monastery of virgins of Kitzingen, called the House of St. Mary in the said Charter for this reason, I think, that St. Hadeloga or Hadelauga, on the testimony of her encomiast, wished her monastery to be dedicated to the Blessed and glorious virgin * Mary. And that Charter is marked at the end in this way: Done at Geltresheim in the public estate in the 12th year of the reign of our lord Pippin, king of the Franks. The 12th year of king Pippin, from his coronation by Pope Stephen, from which the said Eckhart proves that the years of his reign are taken in the private donations to Fulda, falls, when counted, in the year of Christ 766, in which year consequently Hruadlauga, or Hadelauga, for I judge them to be one and the same, still presided as abbess over the Kitzingen monastery.
[18] the reasons of Eckhart, who thinks otherwise, The said Eckhart detains us somewhat here, who, contending that St. Hadeloga should be struck out of the Series of the abbesses of Kitzingen, and not distinguished from Addula, or Adela, daughter of Dagobert II, king of the Franks, and foundress and abbess of the monastery of Pfalzel, formerly situated near the city of Trier, entered upon this series of the abbesses of Kitzingen, that our St. Thecla was the first abbess established by Boniface, that Heilga succeeded her, and that she was then followed by Hruadlauga, or, as he himself calls her, Rothlauga, recorded in the said Charter in Pistorius: but Eckhart had to think so because he believed that our Saint was summoned into Germany by St. Boniface together with St. Lioba in the year 725, led into error by Othlo, who, as we have already warned before, and as Perier has shown fully from the Life of St. Lioba, inverted the historical order in recounting the deeds of St. Boniface, and confused the things which this holy prelate did in the year 725 with those which he carried out afterwards about the year 748; the author of that Life, Rudolf, lived much nearer to the times of St. Boniface, and so is also far to be preferred to Othlo. Moreover, since the said biographer of St. Lioba makes it sufficiently manifest that in the year 750, when St. Sturm was ill in the Kitzingen monastery, St. Thecla was still staying in the convent of Bischofsheim, some other abbess must be admitted who preceded St. Thecla and presided over the Kitzingen monastery in the said year 750; and I am persuaded that this was no other than St. Hadelauga, most probably the daughter of Charles Martel, for this reason, that she, as both the Catalogue of the abbesses of Kitzingen published by Brusch and both Lives of the same St. Hadeloga demonstrate, was constantly held by the nuns of Kitzingen for their first foundress and abbess, and that her sacred remains, as of their holy and first spiritual mother, raised probably in the tenth century from the earlier sepulchre and laid in an honourable tomb in the Choir, were always in great veneration among the same nuns.
[19] are refuted. It is true indeed, as Eckhart also says, that both Lives of St. Hadeloga were perhaps not written before the twelfth century, and are not free from errors, or certain blemishes; but this reason does not suffice for this saint to be at once plucked out of the number of the abbesses of Kitzingen on that account: for the biographers of the Saints not rarely stray from the truth in certain circumstances, especially if they lived three or four centuries removed from the age of the Saint whose deeds they write, and yet no one judges that on that account the Saints whom they celebrate were invented by them, nor that all credit must at once be withdrawn from them in the other facts they relate, if these cannot be shown from elsewhere to be repugnant to the truth: and since no sufficiently solid reason can be brought forward from elsewhere which renders suspect of error the biographers who assert that St. Hadeloga, who is entirely to be distinguished from Addula or Adela, daughter of Dagobert II, and abbess of the monastery of Pfalzel, who never presided over the Kitzingen monastery, and whose remains were never committed to burial or honoured in this latter convent, was the first foundress and abbess of the often-mentioned monastery of Kitzingen, I altogether judge that credit must be given to the same biographers in this matter too. Further, since St. Hadeloga, as well as Pippin, king of the Franks, probably her brother, could still have survived among the living in the year 766, and the difference which exists between the names Hruadlauga and Hadelauga is so slight that this could easily have arisen in the lapse of time, I judge that that Rothlauga, invented by Eckhart alone, is entirely fictitious, and that in the said Charter in Pistorius the first foundress and abbess of the Kitzingen monastery, St. Hadelauga or Hadeloga, is truly designated, especially because, besides her, no abbess whose name is in any degree similar to that of Hruadlauga, expressed in the said Charter, appears in the Catalogue of the abbesses of Kitzingen published by Brusch; and so our St. Thecla did not come to the rule of the Kitzingen monastery before the said year 766.
[20] Perhaps, however, she was abbess earlier of the monastery of Ochsenfurt, It is doubtful, however, whether our holy Virgin stayed in the convent of Bischofsheim up to the same year 766: for it is sufficiently credible that, before she was set over the Kitzingen monastery, she was already for some years, and perhaps already before the death of St. Boniface, adorned with the laurel of Martyrdom in the year 755, abbess of the monastery of Ochsenfurt, and not rarely assisted St. Hadeloga with counsel and help in the rule of the neighbouring Kitzingen monastery, until at length, St. Hadeloga having died, the rule of this monastery too was fully committed to her. In this way Bolland, the parent of our Work, tried to explain Othlo, cited at no. 2, who writes that our Saint was placed by St. Boniface In the places called Kihhingen and Ochsnofrut, that is, in the monasteries of Kitzingen and Ochsenfurt; although it may no less be believed that Othlo was in error about the time at which St. Thecla was set over the monastery of Ochsenfurt, and that she, after the martyrdom of St. Boniface, for some years too, as the things which we brought forward before from Rudolf, the biographer of St. Lioba, render sufficiently likely, lived at Bischofsheim, and afterwards obtained the rule of both the Ochsenfurt and the Kitzingen monastery. In the catalogue of the abbesses of Kitzingen in Brusch our St. Thecla is indeed not found, and there the second abbess is called Heilga; but it could easily have happened that St. Thecla also had this name, and was two-named, just as St. Lioba was also called Leobgytha and Truthgeba, or that that name Was given her from Sanctity (says the said Bolland), for Heylig in German signifies Holy; but if you admit neither, on account of the authority of Othlo and of the anonymous presbyter of Mainz cited at no. 4, it will have to be said that the Catalogue published by Brusch is faulty here.
[21] [which no longer exists; that of Kitzingen, however, flourishes today under another institute.] The Kitzingen monastery is amply described in the Preliminary Commentary on the Life of St. Hadeloga, cited several times in the course, where, however, it must be added to what was said that this monastery, recovered in the year 1629 from the power of the margraves of Brandenburg, who had occupied it in the year 1544 and assigned it to profane uses, by Philipp Adolf, bishop of Würzburg, and then restored by Johann Gottfried von Guttenberg, flourishes today under the institute of the Ursulines, as Gropp writes, To the great advantage of the female youth. But of the convent of Ochsenfurt I have found no abbess recorded anywhere after our Saint; it is likely therefore that it did not long survive, and, not otherwise than the monastery of Bischofsheim, over which St. Lioba presided, gradually declined after St. Thecla's death, and at length perished. And although the illustrious deeds which St. Thecla carried out in the rule of both monasteries are wholly hidden from us, yet we cannot doubt that she continually advanced from virtue to virtue, and at length, since she was probably younger than St. Lioba, whose death Perier placed about the year 779, about the year 790, or somewhat later, she completed the course of her life with a holy end.
Notes* Teclam (Tecla, accusative)
* Virgini (to the Virgin)