ON ST. EBERHARD, SHEPHERD NEAR FREISING,
IN GERMANY.
SYLLOGE
Of his cult.
Eberhard, shepherd, near Freising in Germany. (S.)
BY J. P.
The Saint, on the eleventh day of March Our predecessors, in volume 2 of March, among the Prætermissi of the eleventh day, made mention of two Eberhards; the one abbot of Einsiedeln in Switzerland, the other a shepherd in Bavaria. The abbot they referred to the twenty-second day of August; on which day, however, as also on the fourteenth of that same month, he had again to be left among the Prætermissi for want of a public cult sufficiently proved. Concerning the Shepherd they noted the following: Bl. Eberhard the shepherd in Bavaria is commemorated by Ferrarius in his General Catalogue on the occasion of the other Eberhard already mentioned. His deeds are related briefly by Matthew Rader in volume 1 of Bavaria Sancta, page 22 (in my copy folio 87), and he asserts that the year and day of his death are unknown, and that he is chiefly venerated about the feast of St. Michael: we therefore defer him, in case we should learn anything more certain, to the twenty-eighth or the following days of September. Anything more certain we have not learned: since, however, his public cult is confirmed by the testimonies of several writers, and no one has given hope that he will supply anything more certain, we judge that he is not to be deferred further. This, then, is Ferrarius's announcement on the eleventh day of March: At Freising in Bavaria, of Bl. Eberhard, monk: and this indeed is the note appended to it. From the documents of the city of Freising. Concerning him Otto, bishop of Freising, in his Chronicle, and J. Aventinus in his Annals. He was a shepherd and lived after the year of Salvation 800.
[2] less clearly recorded by Ferrarius, Would that the author we have praised had striven a little less after brevity, and had noted first, from what source he learned that Eberhard, whom he announces as a monk at Freising, was a shepherd; and secondly, where, either in Otto of Freising's Chronicle or in Aventinus's Annals, he had read anything about an Eberhard after the year 800, whether monk or shepherd! For the testimony especially of Otto would here be of great authority and usefulness; and therefore I consulted his Chronicle, not merely in those places in which I conjectured something of this kind would be found, but I ran through the whole of it with my eyes from the beginning of book 5, that is, from about the year 600, to the very end: yet with fruitless labor; for not a word occurs about an Eberhard, monk or shepherd at Freising. The same happened to me when I turned over the same Otto's books on the Deeds of the emperor Frederick, in place of which I thought the Chronicle had perhaps been cited; and the same when I went to the Annals of Aventinus, although I examined these less carefully, both because the author belongs only to the sixteenth century, and because I have seen neither him nor Otto cited here by anyone other than Ferrarius. But the Freising documents which the same Ferrarius praises are in all likelihood no other than those which are extant in Rader, to whom, as our primary author here, we turn.
[3] according to the letters brought forward by Rader He, then, in Bavaria Sancta at the place cited, reporting our Shepherd under this title: St. Eberhard or Erhard, shepherd near Freising, says: Although I have been able to discover neither the century nor the year in which St. Erhard, whom fortune made a keeper of cattle, may have lived, yet from the Roman records, which concern the church of St. Michael where Eberhard is buried, it can be known that he was a holy man; since in those same records he is called a Saint. What further I have learned of his affairs, I prefer to set down word for word from the letters of the most religious head of the monastery himself, the Reverend Lord Peter, written to the most serene Maximilian, prince of the Bavarians, because this will produce the credit which, apart from this authority, we desire.
[4] he had a celebrated cult about the feast of St. Michael “In a certain filial church, united to this monastery and sacred to the Lord Michael the archangel, commonly called at Duntenhausen, there is also the burial-place of a certain Saint by the name of Eberhard, who, as his likeness also indicates, is said to have been a herdsman of flocks in that same village. His sepulchre is still frequented almost daily, both by those nearby and also by those living farther off. Earth too is eagerly dug out of the tomb, and carried into houses and cattle-stalls, and applied to beasts of burden against poisonous and contagious injuries; so that this very thing may be reckoned no small miracle, that the narrow compass of the tomb suffices for so continual a digging out. But because that Saint passed to the heavenly realms long before that church was given to the monastery by a certain bishop of Freising (as may be gathered from certain Apostolic bulls concerning that church, in which the Saint himself is so called), therefore neither the day nor the year of his death is known to us; his veneration and memory are, however, kept more solemnly about the feast of the Lord Michael.” Thus far Rader, citing in the margin the letters and documents of the Freising monastery of St. Peter of Neustift, and shortly adding: The country folk of the neighborhood celebrate many other wonders, which I do not set down here, since they are reported without witnesses.
[5] Now Nova Cella, by others Neocella, commonly Newstifft, near Freising is a monastery of the Premonstratensian Order, built by Otto I, bishop of Freising, already named, about the year 1140, by the walls of the city of Freising between the confluence of the Isar and the Moosach, and consecrated to St. Peter the apostle. It was distinguished by the title of a provostship until the year 1717, in which it was raised to an abbey. Duntenhausen, on the testimony of Meichelbeck in volume 1 of the History of Freising, page 323, where however he writes Dunkenhusium, is a place distant only three quarters of an hour from Freising. But when its church was united to the monastery of Neustift has not been ascertained. For although both the aforesaid Meichelbeck and Charles Louis Hugo treat expressly of the beginnings and growth of the said monastery, and the former praises or recites here and there in his Work the instruments bearing upon it; and the latter, in volume 2 of the Premonstratensian Annals, among the proofs at column 203 and following, sets out charters of the bishops of Freising and bulls of the Roman Pontiffs, neither of them supplies anything from which we may reach the epoch of that union. Yet knowledge of this epoch would contribute not a little to confirming the antiquity of the cult; since Rader's instrument hints not obscurely that the cult was already flourishing when the union was made.
[6] Nevertheless, since in the said instrument the union is spoken of from time immemorial, as of a thing that had happened from time immemorial, it follows that the cult too was held to be immemorial before the year 1606, before which the instrument was drawn up. Besides, these words: His sepulchre is still frequented almost DAILY, sufficiently indicate both an ancient possession and a constant continuation of the cult: add that appeal is made to the testimony of Apostolic bulls, certainly ancient ones, in which the title of Saint is ascribed to Eberhard. The same title, with the exception of Ferrarius and Brunner, who call him Blessed, is ascribed to him by the very authors already cited and to be cited hereafter, and we have judged that we too should side with them. What I have asserted about the time when the instrument was drawn up cannot be doubted. For it is said to have been sent to Maximilian, prince of Bavaria, by Peter, head of the monastery or Provost of the monastery of Neustift, and no one of that name presided over the monastery after the month of April of the year 1605, when John Dollinger was substituted for Peter Schlaich, as may be seen in the series of Provosts in Christopher Gewold in his Additions to Hund's Metropolis Salisburgensis, volume 2, page 529, and in the aforesaid Hugo, volume 2 of the Premonstratensian Annals, column 335.
[7] and the same according to the assertions of others Rader, over against the things we have just recited, gives an image cut with the graver, in which the Saint is represented in the midst of his flocks, clothed in a shepherd's habit, crowned with rays about the head, and on bended knees with joined hands adoring the heavenly Lamb. But the author does not declare whether that image was engraved on copper after the likeness which Peter, head of the monastery of Neustift, alleges in his letters,
as a second monument of antiquity: for that reason it did not seem good to entrust to our engraver an image not older than a century and a half, and perhaps at that time arranged and drawn according to mere fancy. There is no occasion to say more about the ancient cult; but the unbroken continuation of that cult down to these our own times we deduce from the assertions of the authors who, after Rader's volume 1 of Bavaria Sancta, published in print in the year 1615, illustrated by their published Works the affairs of Bavaria, or of the diocese of Freising, or of the Premonstratensian Order. Among these the first to occur is Gewold in the Work just cited, which came to light in the year 1620; but from him we transcribe nothing, since what he gives is exactly the same as what Rader gave from the letters of Peter, head of the monastery.
[8] and he has it even now. Next comes Andrew Brunner, who in the Annals of the Bavarians, printed in the year 1637, writes thus in part 3, book 12: In the neighboring church too, which is under the guardianship of Neustift, Eberhard the shepherd is frequented with vows; where this good keeper of cattle of former days now also holds his ancient place, and breathes into the clod by which he is covered a power salutary against poisons harmful to living creatures, and therefore much sought after by country folk as a most certain amulet. Next in succession is the author of the Topography of Bavaria, printed in the German tongue in the year 1644, where he relates that St. Eberhard rests at Dintenhausen, that frequent pilgrimages are made to his tomb, and other things which we have seen in Rader. Finally there are added two writers of this century, Meichelbeck and Hugo, named above, of whom the former says that St. Eberhard the shepherd has a cult, but for the rest transcribes Brunner almost word for word; the other speaks thus: At Dientenhausen rests the body of St. Eberard, herdsman of flocks, and his sepulchre flashes with frequent prodigies. So he in the year 1736, in which he published volume 2 of the Annals: then he adds: It is remarkable how the age and deeds of this Saint are not recognized even by his own countrymen. For what Matthew Rader in his Bavaria Sancta and Canisius report, all of that they published hesitantly and supported by no documents, not even by contemporary ones. What Rader published, in what manner, and from what source, has been seen above. But who Canisius may be, or in what place he treated of our Saint, I have not been able to discover.