Lullus (Archbishop of Mainz)

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Statue of Lullus on the Lullusbrunnen on Rathausplatz in Bad Hersfeld

Lullus OSB (also Lul ; * around 710 in Wessex ; † October 16, 786 in Hersfeld ) was the first regular archbishop of Mainz and first abbot of the Hersfeld monastery .

Life

Lullus was born in Wessex , England around 710 . He was a monk in the Malmesbury Benedictine Abbey in Wiltshire . During a pilgrimage in 737 in Rome, he met the Benedictine monk Boniface . Lullus supported him as a deacon in the German mission and later continued the reorganization of the church in the Franconian Empire that Bonifatius had started .

From 738 Lullus stayed in the Fritzlar monastery , which was probably founded by Bonifatius around 724. Wigbert, also from England, was the abbot of the monastery at that time . Lullus also lived for some time in the Ohrdruf monastery ( Thuringia ) founded by Bonifatius in 726 . Around 745/46 Lullus was called a deacon, on a trip to Rome in 747/48 he was called archdeacon, and between 748 and 751 he was presumably ordained a priest by Boniface. On his behalf he obtained the Zachariasprivileg for Fulda 751 in Rome for the Fulda monastery . He was ordained choir bishop of Mainz under Boniface in 752, making him his designated successor. On his departure for the Frisian mission, Bonifatius entrusted his foundations, in particular the Fulda monastery destined to his burial place , to the protection of Lullus, from which he derived claims to power after the death of Boniface as bishop of Mainz, against which Fulda and his abbot Sturmi , also a student of Boniface, With reference to the Zachariasprivileg vehemently and finally successfully put up a defense. A year later, the Frankish King Pippin confirmed the ordination of Lullus as choir bishop of Mainz and with it the prospect of a succession arrangement, which, from Boniface's point of view, initially averted the danger of the Anglo-Saxons being eliminated in the mission area through the ordination of a Frankish successor. After Boniface's death in 754, Lullus succeeded him as Bishop of Mainz, but did not receive the rank of archbishop personally conferred on his predecessor. The oldest surviving Vita Bonifatii of Willibald, presumably commissioned by him , was dedicated to him and Bishop Megingaud of Würzburg .

Only around 781 Lull received by Pope Adrian I , the archbishop's pallium . In the absence of a legal regulation to create a Mainz ecclesiastical province, Lullus initiated the falsification of the papal charter, which had once made Boniface Archbishop of Cologne and which at the same time was supposed to make Cologne the metropolitan seat of an Austrasian ecclesiastical province, but this failed in 747 due to the resistance of the Franconian clergy. Now Mainz was used instead of Cologne in the document text, creating a church province that included Tongeren, Cologne, Worms, Speyer, Utrecht and the Germania on the right bank of the Rhine, especially Würzburg, evangelized by Bonifatius. Since Lullus succeeded in gaining recognition for this forgery, this ecclesiastical province should actually have come into being until it was founded in 799 under his successor Richulf on the occasion of the visit of Pope Leo III. the situation was reorganized through the establishment of Trier and Cologne as additional archbishoprics. Before that, after the initial failure of efforts to create a Mainz church province, Lullus had enlarged the diocese of Mainz considerably by incorporating the dioceses of Büraburg (near Fritzlar ) and Erfurt . From 769 Lullus established the Hersfeld Abbey , which he placed under the protection of Charlemagne in 775 . Letters from and to Lullus have come down to us with the letters of Boniface and edited by Michael Tangl.

Lullus died on October 16, 786 in Hersfeld , where he was buried in the monastery church.

Afterlife

On October 28, 850, the new Carolingian column basilica , actually a Salvatorpatronium , dedicated to the memory of Saint Wigbert, was consecrated by the Archbishop of Mainz, Hrabanus Maurus . The reburial ( Translatio ) Lull, Wigbert and Witta in the east choir of this basilica, by a procession and a religious ceremony, was probably in the same year on October 16 (the date of death of the Lull) instead. In any case, there was an annual church festival on this date , to which many pilgrims made a pilgrimage to the graves. From this festival the probably oldest folk festival in Germany developed, the Lullusfest , which is still celebrated today.

The " Vita Lulli", written by Lampert von Hersfeld (probably written between 1063 and 1073) led to Lullus being venerated as a saint and, along with Wigbert, the main patron saint of the abbey.

Lullus deserves the credit of having brought to a conclusion the reorganization of the church organization that Boniface took up in the Frankish Empire . In the Hessian-Thuringian area in particular, this also includes the completion of the Germanic mission, as it was also started by Bonifatius. Lullus sought a compromise with the Frankish kings more than Boniface, who sought closer ties to the papacy in Rome .

Representations

In the painting of a reliquary from the 15th century in the Fritzlar collegiate church , he is shown in pontifical mass clothing with his right hand blessing and holding the bishop's staff in the left.

Epitaph

The grave of Lullus has not survived over the centuries. In a Fritzlar copial book from the 15th century there is a traditional grave inscription ( Epithaphium sanctissimi Lulli patroni nostri ), which could be contemporary and perhaps even come from Lullus himself (the first-person form is not an argument for this!).

The verses have four distiches :

Latin text translation

Lul michi nomen erat, famosa Britannia mater,
     Quae me Romanos misit adire patres.
 Post sibi me iunxit doctor Bonifacius almus,
     Imposuitque humeris infula sacra meis.
Et dum martirio caelestes scandit ad arces,
     Manensi ecclesiae me iubet esse patrem.
Hic mihi sit requies, donec vox alma parliament:
     "Pulvis, qui dormis, surge iubente deo".

Lul was my name, in England, the glorious, I was born,
     Which as a pilgrim to Rome sent me to the fathers.
Then Boniface, the holy teacher, took me to himself,
     And he laid the bishop's robe on my shoulders.
When, through martyrdom, he climbed the fortress of heaven,
     I became, as he wished, ruler of the church in Mainz.
Let me rest here, until I
     hear the lofty voice: "Dust you sleep, get up, for it is God who calls you!"

Further verses in three so-called Leonine hexameters , i.e. H. Verses with internal rhymes, from a later period, refer to Lullus as the helpers of the sick. These verses are first documented in the Gesta Regum Anglorum by William of Malmesbury .

Latin text translation

Antistes Lullus, quo non est sanctior ullus,
Pollens divina tribuente Deo medicina,
Occurrit morbis, ut totus praedicat orbis.

Bishop Lull: He was unsurpassable in piety,
God granted him the favor of practicing the heavenly healing art,
he remedied illness for which he was praised all over the world.

Remembrance day

On October 16, the day of his death.

Remarks

  1. ↑ See St. Schipperges, Bonifatius ac socii eius (see literature below) p. 111.
  2. ↑ See Staab (see literature below)
  3. ↑ Michael Tangl (Ed.): S. Bonifatii et Lulli epistolae . In: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae selectae , vol. 1. Weidmann, Berlin 1916; not included in: Reinhold Rau (arr.): Letters of Boniface. Willibald's Life of Boniface. Along with some contemporary documents. Using the translations by M. Tangl u. Ph. H. Külb revised. by Reinhold Rau. 2., unchanged. Edition Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchges., 1988 (first edition 1968), ISBN 3-534-01415-4 .
  4. ↑ cf. Hrabanus Maurus, carm. 77, ed. E. Dümmler. In: MGH Poetae, Bd. 2, Weidmann, Berlin, 1884, p. 228f., On dating cf. ibid. note 3; F. Staab, in: Handbuch der Mainzer Kirchengeschichte, Vol. 1 Christian Antiquity and Middle Ages, p. 164 with note 12.
  5. ^ A formal canonization of Lullus never took place. The reburial (translatio) of 852 is variously misinterpreted as a canonization.

literature

Web links

predecessor Office successor
Boniface Archbishop of Mainz
755–786 		Richulf
personal data
SURNAME Lullus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION first archbishop of Mainz
DATE OF BIRTH at 710
PLACE OF BIRTH Wessex
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 786
Place of death Hersfeld