Saint Ulrich

At that time (909), Udalric made a journey to Rome Rome Birthplace of Maximian. to visit the tombs of the holy Apostles. The Pope gave him a most favorable welcome, telling him that God had revealed to him that Adalbero, Bishop of Augsburg, was dead, and that Udalric was to be his successor. The humble pilgrim avoided this dignity by alleging to the Pope his youth and his incapacity. The Pope replied that since he refused this charge now, he would be obliged to accept it later under much more difficult circumstances. Indeed, upon his return, after having spent some fifteen years with his mother, who had become a widow, he was obliged, upon the death of Hiltin, successor to Adalbero, to occupy the episcopal see of Augsburg (924). He found, according to the Pope's prediction, the city of Augsburg in the most deplorable state: the Hungarians and the Slavs had recently pillaged it, burned the cathedral, and ruined the abbey of Saint Gall; they had also massacred Saint Wiborada, whom the Germans honor as a martyr. The new bishop hastily built a church, while awaiting a more magnificent temple, to gather the people. He helped and consoled his flock. As soon as he could, he excused himself from following the imperial court, as his status as a temporal lord obliged him to do; he charged his nephew to replace him in the army, and limited himself to his spiritual duties. He rose regularly at three o'clock in the morning to attend the office with his canons, and he then recited other prayers. At daybreak, he said the office of the dead in the choir, with Prime, and attended High Mass. Once Terce was finished, he offered the holy sacrifice and did not leave the church until after None; he then went to the hospital to console the sick. Every day he washed the feet of twelve poor people, to whom he distributed abundant alms. The rest of the day was spent in instruction, visiting the sick, and fulfilling the other duties of a vigilant pastor. He ate only one meal, and that only in the evening before Compline. A dish was served for the poor and for strangers, which he never touched. He forbade himself the use of linen: he slept on straw, and took only a few hours of rest. During Lent, he redoubled his austerities and gave even more considerable time to his devotional practices.

Each year, he held two synods and visited his diocese, undeterred by the harshness of the seasons, the difficulties of the roads, or the frequent incursions of the barbarians. He did not travel with a prince's retinue, but with great simplicity, escorted only by those persons necessary to instruct the faithful, confer the sacrament of confirmation, and fulfill other pastoral duties. He was tireless, and often remained fasting until nightfall to listen to the complaints and depositions of the most virtuous members of the parish he was visiting, to judge the cases of the accused, to settle disputes, to remedy the disorders of which he had been informed, to confirm the faithful, to preach the word of God to them, and to rebuke them for the vices to which they were addicted. However arduous the dedication of churches and chapels might be, he never refused to perform it, neither for seculars nor for regulars; and one day, when poor people came to beg him to dedicate an oratory they had built in a desert place, remote and very difficult to access, where no other bishop had ever been willing to go, he went there without delay. After his visits were completed, he would assemble his priests and parish curates, either in the deaneries or in his metropolitan city where, twice a year, he held his synod. There, he would rebuke them with a generous zeal, yet accompanied by a truly paternal gentleness, for the faults he had recognized in their conduct. He recommended that they discharge their ministry worthily, instruct the people whom God had entrusted to their vigilance, animate them to virtue by their words and examples, visit the sick, carefully administer the Sacraments to them, and use the tithes and offerings of the faithful for the assistance of the poor and the lodging of pilgrims. He forbade them, among other things, to keep hunting dogs and birds, to attend wedding feasts and public games, to foster quarrels and lawsuits, to live in idleness, and, what is more significant, to traffic in holy things through the detestable crime of simony, which was then devastating the Church.

One cannot believe the good he did in his diocese through this solicitude and so many holy instructions. The city and the towns changed their appearance; the clergy reformed themselves, the laity became pious, and one saw everywhere how advantageous it is for a flock to have a good shepherd, and for the Christian people to be governed by a holy bishop. He also watched with great zeal over the temporal interests of his people. Thus, he surrounded with walls and fortified the city of Augsburg and some other places in his diocese; but this security, this peace, procured with such solicitude, were troubled by two great wars in Germany, in which the city of Augsburg and all the surrounding country were engulfed. The first was between Emperor Otto I, of whom we have already spoke empereur Othon Ier Holy Roman Emperor, brother of Bruno of Cologne. n, and Prince Ludolf, his son, who p referred to t prince Ludolf Son of Emperor Otto I, who rebelled against his father. ake up arms against his own father rather than return to his uncle Henry, Duke of Nuremberg, some lands he had usurped from him. As Saint Udalric, in this great dispute, remained always faithful to the emperor, Arnulf, Count Palatine, who held for Ludolf, taking advantage of the moment when our Saint had gone to lead troops to the imperial camp, entered Augsburg, ruined its fortifications, pillaged its churches and the houses of private individuals, and carried off a great booty. This desolation was very painful to the holy Prelate, especially since the victor had not spared the sacred vessels and had stripped his cathedral of all its ornaments. He returned in haste to Augsburg, which Arnulf had abandoned; but, finding the city defenseless, he remained there only one day and was forced to withdraw to the castle of Mechingen, which was part of his domain, and to fortify himself there. Arnulf, being informed of this, had the temerity to come and besiege him there; but God, who had permitted this storm only to test or exercise his patience, showed, through admirable events, that he was under His singular protection. Arnulf's army was defeated and cut to pieces by a small troop of soldiers that Theobald, our Saint's brother, gathered hastily and without any preparation for war. God punished the impiety of those who had pillaged the cathedral. One was possessed by the devil, another lost his reason, a third was killed by the horse he had bought with the price of his theft. Arnulf himself, having gone to invest Regensburg, was killed there during the first sortie of the besieged. Meanwhile, Udalric, who had no bitterness against those from whom he had received harm, worked so diligently to reconcile the emperor with his son that, going from one camp to the other to negotiate this great affair, he finally brought it to a happy conclusion and, by this means, restored peace to all of Germany in the year 954.

But this public tranquility did not last long: the following year, the Hungarians, who were then still a barbarian and idolatrous people, threw themselves in such great numbers into the land of the Noricans, from the Danube to the Black Forest, that no one remembered ever having seen such a formidable army. They pillaged the entire country, burned most of the towns and villages, along with the monasteries and churches, among others that of Saint Afra, and finally came to lay siege to Augsburg. The Saint brought a good number of soldiers into the city to defend it, but his main trust was in God. He had public processions held, invited the women especially to pray in his cathedral, and prayed himself, with tears in his eyes and his face to the ground, offering himself as a victim to the justice of God to turn the scourges away from his people; finally, having placed his soldiers in the places where the strongest attacks were feared, he went himself to encourage them to do well, not with a helmet on his head and a cuirass on his body, but in his church vestments and stole. At the first assault, one of the barbarian leaders having been killed, the others were forced to withdraw; before the second, the Saint said Mass and gave communion to some of those present; the Barbarians hardly dared to approach the walls, seeing too great a number of defenders there. Finally, Emperor Otto arrived, and, having given battle to the Hungarians, he won such a glorious victory over them that almost none remained who could return to their country: some were killed in the fray; others, while fleeing, were massacred by the peasants or by those guarding the passages; these were drowned in the Lech or in the Danube, from which all the boats had been removed, and those died of their wounds, or of hunger and misery. After such a happy day, the emperor entered Augsburg, where he testified loudly that it was to the prayers of our Saint and to his constancy that he owed such great assistance from heaven. Together they rendered their thanks to the Almighty, and had public prayers held for the Christians who died in the combat. Theobald, Udalric's brother, and one of his nephews, named Raimbaud, were among that number. He went himself to look for their bodies among those of the other dead, and buried them solemnly in his church. Afterward, he applied himself entirely to repairing the ruins that such a lamentable war had caused in the country. He had the church of Saint Afra, the famous patroness of Augsbu rg, rebuilt Sainte-Afre Martyr and patron saint of Augsburg whose church was restored by Ulrich. , and even had the good fortune to find the place where her relics were. He fortified his metropolis again, brought in the provisions it needed; and, as he knew that his canons were in extreme poverty because their farms had been burned and their lands had remained fallow, he fed them charitably at his table until their property produced sufficient income for their subsistence.

All things being restored to a better state, he made a second journey to Rome (958); he was received there with great honor by Prince Alberic, and he was given the head of Saint Abundius to enrich his church. He had already obtained from the King of Burgundy, eighteen years earlier, the body of one of the martyrs of the Theban Legion, coming from Saint-Maurice in Valais.

Heaven, whose interests Udalric defended everywhere, granted him great favors. He had prophetic visions. He was sometimes assisted in the celebration of the holy mysteries by Adalberon and Fortunatus, two holy bishops who already reigned with God in heaven. They assisted him especially in the blessing of the holy oils on Maundy Thursday. The oils consecrated by Udalric had so much virtue that they performed many miracles. Several sick people were healed by them; the Saint himself, having had himself anointed with them by an excellent religious named Hiltin during a dangerous illness, suddenly recovered perfect health. The water had so much respect for him that, while crossing a ford where his officers were soaked to the waist, he alone was not wet at all. Having one day found the Tar overflowing, with no hope of being able to cross it, he had an altar set up on the shore and celebrated Mass there, after which he and all his men crossed it without difficulty. A boat that was carrying him on the Danube, having struck a stake, was about to sink: all his men saved themselves and left him alone inside without thinking, so much had fear seized them; but this boat did not sink until he had been pulled from it.

This great Saint, seeing that the end of his days was approaching, wished to visit once more, for a third time, the sepulchers of the blessed apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul. His advanced age did not prevent him from making this journey with joy (967). The Pope, the cardinals, and the other prelates he found in Rome, being well informed of his merit, gave him many testimonies of veneration and friendship. He fulfilled his vows there, and also received extraordinary favors from heaven through the intercession of the prince of the Apostles. Having learned that Emperor Otto and Empress Adelaide, his wife, were in Ravenna, he went there to greet them. Otto did him the honor of coming to meet him as far as the door of his chamber, even though he was only wearing one shoe. Adelaide also wished to enjoy, for some time, the happiness of his conversation, which ignited in her heart a new fire of divine love. Our holy old man took advantage of these benevolent dispositions: full of esteem and affection for Abbot Adalberon, his nephew, whom he had formerly placed with the emperor, he begged this prince to accept him as bishop of Augsburg after his death, and to grant him the commendation and administration, in his place, of all the temporalities of the bishopric. The emperor, who could dispose of most of the bishoprics, willingly granted both requests, all the more so as he was pleased with the services his nephew had rendered him: he also presented him with a considerable sum of money for the needs of the diocese. Thus, the holy Prelate returned to Augsburg, laden with honors, consolations, and riches.

But as he had acted too humanly in this matter, and had even contravened the holy canons, which forbid bishops from procuring successors for a time when they will no longer be alive, God did not permit him to leave this world without having been punished for this fault. Having been summoned to the Council of Ingelheim, where the emperor and his son were present, the prelates who composed it reprimanded him and forced Abbot Adalberon to relinquish the marks of episcopal dignity that he had assumed on the mere word of the prince, against ecclesiastical law. This same abbot, his nephew, died suddenly while returning from this Council, without Saint Udalric, who was in the same house, having had the time to assist him. Finally, besides the penances he imposed upon himself to satisfy the justice of God, he received other punishments that we do not know of, since his historian assures us that, waking one day from a deep sleep in which he had had a prophetic vision, he cried out in great dismay: "Woe to me, woe to me for ever having known my nephew Adalberon! for, having let myself give in to his desires, these Saints will not receive me into their company until I have been punished very severely." We see, by this, that the greatest men are not exempt from sinning, and from following in their actions the inclinations of the flesh and blood; but that God does not leave them unpunished, and that He chastises them with all the more rigor, as they were obliged to live with a greater detachment from the things of the earth.

Saint Udalric's intention, upon being relieved of the cares of the episcopate, had been to retire to an abbey of the Order of Saint Benedict, whose habit he had taken, in order to prepare more quietly for his final hour, which could not be very far off; which clearly shows that he had sinned only through inadvertence; but this plan not having succeeded, he resumed with new zeal the conduct of his diocese, the instruction of his people, and the application to the reform of his clergy and the monasteries that were under his charge. He asked the emperor for the abbey of Ortembourg, which his nephew had held in commendam, and submitted it to the election of the religious, which he had held in his presence, so that it would fall upon a person capable of restoring the vigor of regular observance in that place. He said Mass every day, prayed to God continually, ate almost nothing, and took very little rest. Finally, Our Lord made known to him the time when He wished to call him to Himself. Being very ill, he had all his furniture distributed to his ecclesiastics and to the needy, except for his bed, with a tapestry and a table service that he left to his successors. On the day of Saint John the Baptist, finding himself strengthened by a heavenly apparition, he went to say two Masses at the church of this holy Precursor, which he had had built; then, his weakness having returned, he had to be put back to bed; he remained there for several more days, during which his mind and heart were always raised toward heaven. Finally, on the sixth day of the octave of Saint Peter, having had ashes placed on his floor in the shape of a cross, and having had them sprinkled with holy water, he had himself laid upon them, and there rendered his spirit to God, on July 4, 973, by a gentle slumber, which was for him a happy passage to eternal glory. His body, which was stripped to be washed, exhaled an odor so pleasant that the whole room was perfumed by it. He was buried, with extraordinary solemnity, in the church of Saint Afra, by Saint Wolfgang, Bishop of Regensburg, who came expressly to Augsburg to pay him this last duty.

One cannot believe the number and excellence of the miracles that were performed thereafter at his tomb. The blind, the lame, all the infirm were healed there, and the possessed were delivered from the tyranny of the evil spirit. This is what led Pope John XV, in the year 9 93, only twe pape Jean XV Pope who performed the formal canonization of Ulrich in 993. nty years after his death, to issue the decree of his canonization. In the year 1183, his holy remains were found in a vault of the abbey church known as Saint-Ulric and Saint-Afra, where they had been deposited, and they were transferred to a more honorable place. Saint Udalric founded the monastery of Saint-Étienne for nuns of the Order of Saint Benedict. It is today a chapter of secular canonesses. The memory of this holy bishop is in great veneration in the portion of Lorraine bordering on Alsace. There exists, not far from the town of Sarrebourg, a chapel long ago erected in his honor, in which some of his relics are kept and which is the destination of a frequented pilgrimage.

Saint Ulric is represented: 1° perceiving in a vision Saint Simpert, his predecessor on the see of Augsburg, who complains to our pious bishop that his tomb remains exposed to the elements since the barbarians burned the church of Saint Afra of Augsburg where he previously rested: he begs him to reinter his body in an honorable place, which was done; 2° in bishop's vestments, receiving from the hand of an angel the cross that is to guide the German army in its struggle against the Hungarians: this is an allusion to the Battle of Lechfeld w here the troops bataille de Lech Decisive victory of Otto I over the Hungarians in 955. of Otto, whom Saint Ulric accompanied during the combat, cut to pieces the Barbarians who threatened to ruin the episcopal city. The Bollandists report that this golden cross was preserved, in memory of this miraculous victory, in the abbeys of Saint Afra and Saint Ulric; 3° on horseback, with this same cross in his hand, separating the armies of Otto and his son Ludolf, ready to come to blows; 4° in a group, with Saint Afra, martyr, as patrons of the city of Augsburg; 5° holding a fish in his hand or on a book: this is an allusion to the following fact. He was supping one Thursday evening with his friend Saint Conrad, Bishop of Consta nce: as they saint Conrad Bishop of Constance and friend of Ulrich, involved in the miracle of the fish. were speaking of the things of God, they did not notice the passage of time. Now, it happened that an envoy of the Duke of Bavaria, charged with a message for Ulric, found the two friends seated, on Friday morning, before a table served with meat. Ulric, consulting only his good heart, took one of the dishes that were before him and offered it to the courier to compensate him for his trouble. This wicked man did not touch it, kept the dish, and ran to recount what he had seen. To give peremptory proof of what he was asserting, he wanted to present the piece of meat that had been given to him; but, by a miraculous permission of heaven, it was found to be nothing more than a fish, which justified the servant of God and made the messenger pass for a slanderer.

He is invoked primarily against the bite of rabid dogs, for which it is customary to drink from the chalice that was found on his chest at the opening of his tomb, and against the dormice that gnaw the fruits of the earth. Indeed, we find in an author who lived at the end of the 12th century that, since his death, no dormouse could remain alive in all the surroundings of Augsburg: to such a point that a little earth from his sepulcher, being devoutly transported elsewhere, drove these animals away instantly. This author assures that, in his time, this wonder was often renewed.

Acta Sanctorum. — Cf. Surius, year July 4; Godescard; Rutilot.