† Saint of the Day †
(October 31)
✠ St. Wolfgang of Regensburg ✠
The
Almoner:
Born: 934 AD
Died: October 31, 994
Venerated in:
Roman Catholic Church
Eastern Orthodox Church
Canonized: October 8, 1051
Pope Leo IX
Feast: October 31
Patronage:
Apoplexy; Carpenters and Wood
Carvers; Paralysis; Regensburg, Germany; Stomach Diseases; Strokes
Saint Wolfgang of Regensburg was
bishop of Regensburg in Bavaria from Christmas 972 until his death. He is a
saint of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. He is regarded as
one of the three great German saints of the 10th century, the other two being
Saint Ulrich and Saint Conrad of Constance.
We recognize at once that a St.
Wolfgang must have been the patron saint of that great musician Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart. Not too many Americans, even those of German descent, have
chosen to give their sons such a lupine baptismal name. Yet St. Wolfgang of
Regensburg remains one of the truly great saints of medieval Germany, and the
model of a reforming Bishop.
Wolfgang, the son of a nobleman,
attended school first at the Benedictine monastery school of Reichenau, and
then at the cathedral school of Wuerzburg. Because of his talent, he was then
invited to teach in the cathedral school at Trier. Although still layman, he
fell under the spell of the great local Benedictine monastery of St. Maximin
and became a willing assistant to the reforming bishop of Trier.
After the death of this bishop,
Wolfgang himself joined the Benedictines, although not at Trier but at
Einsiedeln in Switzerland. Here he was ordained a priest in 968 by St. Ulrich,
bishop of Augsburg.
Soon after ordination Father
Wolfgang was sent to present Hungary to preach the gospel to the pagan Magyars,
who had only lately settled there. He did his best, but without any visible
success. In 972 he was brought back to Germany and named bishop of Regensburg.
(The church authorities, in promoting his bishop after his Hungarian “failure”
must have thought no less of him on account of his missionary unsuccess. For
his part, the failure was probably an incentive to greater humility and
stronger effort as he took over his episcopal duties.)
It seems that the diocese of
Regensburg at that point needed a thorough reform, and Bishop Wolfgang was the
man to accomplish it.
What do we mean by necessary reform?
Well, we are human beings, and it is all too easy for us to become relaxed in
Christian practices through one bad influence or another. Then it is hard to
return to the straight and narrow path. Catholics begin to go downhill
particularly when the members of their religious orders enter a decline, for
the religious orders are normally a major inspiration to high standards.
Wolfgang, therefore, focused his efforts particularly on jacking up two local
monasteries of monks, that of St. Emmeram and that of Altach. There were also two
monasteries of nuns that had become slipshod in observing the rule that was
theoretically their key to holiness. These nuns he also brought back to good
discipline.
Wolfgang’s method of reform was
interesting. No doubt he lowered the boom when that was necessary. But he seems
to have depended most on shaming people into better ways by a good example.
When he became bishop he did not assume the princely ways of his fellow bishops
in the Empire (although like them, he was a civil as well as it church ruler).
No, he continued to wear his monk’s habit and to follow the monastic
austerities, and he saw to it that his household was free of worldly lifestyle.
Likewise, he corrected the nuns of the two rundown monasteries, less, it seems,
by scolding them than by founding at Regensburg a convent that excelled in a
good example through its careful observance of the rule.
We may be sure, nevertheless, that
Bishop Wolfgang gained enemies among the monks and nuns that he felt obliged to
correct, and among the clerics and laypeople to whom he laid down the law. No
matter how highly placed a corrector, people who have fallen into waywardness
of teaching or behavior simply do not like to be corrected. We have seen
examples of this all-too-human trait in our own day. I am sure that Wolfgang
felt pain at their resistance. Maybe that was why, at one point, he fled his
diocese and tried to set up as a hermit on the shores of what is now called
Lake St. Wolfgang. His escape didn’t succeed. A hunter discovered him and
brought him back home to face once more the unpopularity that is the
occupational hazard of a bishop or any superior who has the duty of enforcing
the law.
But opposition to him was in the
short run. In the long run, the religious and laity of the diocese of Regensburg
came to appreciate the idealism and courage and holiness of their bishop. When
he died in 994 while on a trip down the Danube, his body was brought back and
enshrined in Regensburg. It quickly became a center of pilgrimage, and in 1054
the pope canonized St. Wolfgang as a model of the bishop who is ready to
correct as well as direct the flock entrusted to him.
~ Father Robert F. McNamara
