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 EMMERAM

406

EMMERICH

of Ansoaldus (674). Having heard that the inhabi- tants of Bavaria were still idolaters, he determined to carry the light of the Faith to them. Ascending the Loire, crossing the Black Forest, and going down the Danube, he reached Ratisbon in a region then gov- erned by the Duke Theodo. For three years he laboured in Bavaria, preaching and converting the people, acquiring also a renown (for holiness. He then turned his steps towards Rome, to visit the tombs of Sts. Peter and Paul, but after a five days' journey, at a place now called Kleinhelfendorf, south of Munich, he was set upon by envoys of the Duke of Bavaria who tortured him cruelly. He died shortly afterwards at Ascheim, abovit fifteen miles distant. The cause of this attack and the circumstances attending his death are not known. According to the legend related by Arilin, Bisliop of Freising, the first to write a life of St. Emmeram, Ota, daughter of the Duke of Bavaria, who liad been .seduced by Sigipaldus, an important per- sonage of her father's court, fearing her father's wrath, confessed her fault to the bishop. Moved with compassion, he advised her to name himself, whom every one respected, as her seducer, and it was in con- sequence of this accusation that Theodo ordered him to be followed and put to death. The improbability of the tale, the details of the saint's martyrdom, which are certainly untrue, and the fantastic account of the prodigies attending his death show that the writer, infected by the pious mania of his time, simply added to the facts imaginary details supposed to redound to the glory of the martyr.

All that is known as to the date of the saint's death is that it took place on 22 September, some time be- fore St. Rupert's arrival in Bavaria (696). At Klein- helfendorf, where he was tortured, there stands to-day a chapel of St. Emmeram, and at Ascheim, where he died, is also a martyr's chapel built in his honour. His remains were removed to Ratisbon and interred in the church of St. George, from which they were trans- ferred about the middle of the eighth century by Bishop Gawibaldus to a church dedicated to the saint. This church having been destroyed by fire in 1642, the saint's body was found under the altar in 1645 and was encased in a magnificent reliquary. The relics, which were canonical ly recognized by Bishop Ignaz de Senestrez in 1833, are exposed for the veneration of the faithful every year on 22 September. It is im- possible to prove that Emmeram occupied the See of Ratisbon, for the official episcopal list begins with the above-mentioned Gawibaldus, who was consecrated by St. Boniface in 739 and died in 764.

Sdtskens, Commcnl prnv. in Ada SS. (1757), Sept., VI, 454-74- Die neuentdeckle Confessio des hi. Emmeram zu Rcgens- burg, in Riim. QuartalschT.. IX (1895), 1-55; Sepp, Aribonis eniscovi Frisinaensis vita S. Emmerammi authentica, in Anal, Bolland. (Brus.sels), VII (1SS9), 211-55.

Leon Clugnet.

Emmeram, Abbey of Saint, a Benedictine monas- tery at Ratisbon (Regensburg), named after its tradi- tional founder, the patron saint of the city. The ex- act date of founilation is unknown. St. Emmeram flourished in the middle of the seventh century and 062 is given by most authorities as the approximate date of the establishment of this monastery. Its be- ginnings were connected with a chapel in which cer- tain much venerated relics were preserved, and ■which, in 697, was enlarged and beautified by Theo- do, Duke of Bavaria, who built at the same time a new monastery for lienedictine monks, of which Appollonius was first abbot. It was still further en- larged by Charlemagne about the year 800 and en- dowed with extensive possessions and many privi- leges. When St. Boniface, in 739, divided Bavaria into four dioceses, the first Bishop of Ratisbon fixed his see at the Abbey of St. I'lnimcram, but later on it was removed by a siibsc<iu(nt bishop to the old Cathe- dral of St. Stephen, which stands beside the present

one. In 830, the then bishop obtained from Louis, King of Bavaria, the administration of the abbey for himself and his successors, and for upwards of a hun- dred years the Bishops of Ratisbon ruled the monas- tery as well as the diocese, but in 968 St. Wolfgang restored its independence and from that time for- ward it enjoyed the rule of its own abbots. For some centuries it was customary to elect as bishop a canon of St. Stephen's and a monk of St. Emmeram 's alternately. Many of the early bishops of Ratisbon were buried in the abbey church and their tombs are still to be seen there, as also is that of the Emperor Arnulph (d. 899). The abbots held the rank of princes of the Empire, and as such had a seat in the Im- perial Diets. The present church, which is a Roman- esque basilica, dates from the thirteenth century, but was restored in a somewhat debased style in the eighteenth. It is one of the few German churches with a detached bell-tower. The cloisters date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and are in a fair state of preservation. The monastery was sup- pressed early in the nineteenth century and in 1809 the conventual buildings became the palace of the Prince of Thurn and Taxis, hereditary postmaster- general of the old German Empire, whose family still (1909) reside there. The cloister garth, in the centre of which is a modern mortuary chapel, is now used as the family burial-place.

MiGNE, Diet, des Abbayes (Paris, 1S56).

G. Ctprian Alston,

Emmerich, Anne Catherine, an Augustinian nun, stigmatic, and ecstatic, b. 8 September, 1774, at Flamsche, near Coesfeld, in the Diocese of Mimster, Westphalia, Germany; d. at Diilmen, 9 February, 1824. Her parents, both peasants, were very poor and pious. At twelve she was bound out to a farmer, and later was a seamstress for several years. Very delicate all the time, she was sent to study music, but finding the organist's family very poor she gave them the little she had saved to enter a convent, and actually waited on them as a servant for several years. Moreover, she was at times so pressed for something to eat that her mother brought her bread at intervals, parts of which went to her master's family. In her twenty-eight, year (1802) she entered the Augustinian convent at .\gnetenberg, Diilmen. Here she was content to be regarded as the lowest in the house. Her zeal, how- ever, disturbed the tepid sisters, who were puzzled and annoyed at her strange powers and her weak health, and notwithstanding her ecstasies in church, cell, or at work, treated her with some antipathy. Despite her excessive frailty, she discharged her duties cheerfully and faitlifully. When Jerome Bonaparte closed the convent in 1812 she was compelled to find refuge in a poor widow's house. In 1813 she became bedridden. She foresaw the downfall of Napoleon twelve years in advance, and counselled in a mysterious way the suc- cessor of St. Peter. Even in her childhood the super- natural was so ordinary to her that in her innocent ignorance she thought all other children enjoyed the same favours as she herself did, i. e. to converse famili- arly with the Child Jesus, etc. She displayed a mar- vellous knowledge when the sick and poor came to the "bright little sister" seeking aid; she knew their dis- eases and prescribed remedies that did not fail. By nature she was quick and lively and easily moved to great sympathy by the sight of the sufferings of others. This feeling passed into her spiritual being with the re- sult that she prayed and suffered much for the souls of Purgatory whom she often saw, and for the salvation of sinners whose miseries were known to her even when far away. Soon after she was confined to bed (1813) the stigmata came externally, even to the marks of the thorns. All this she unsuccessfully tried to conceal as she had concealed the crosses impressed upon her breast.