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 ERHARD

518

ERIE

Scotland, Dom Leodgar Stocker, and a lay brother took up their abode in October, 1S76. Dom Placid was the first prior. Two years later, Dom Hildebrand succeeded Dom Placid, and at once set about building a monastery that would accommodate a community large enough to chant the Di\-ine Office in choir. It was finished in ISSO, when the number of monks was increased to eleven with three laj' brothers.

Meanwhile Father Haigh had found his last resting- place in the Blessed Sacrament chapel, so the unten- anted presbrtery was converted into a Catholic gram- mar school, the first of its kind in the neighbourhood of Birmingham, with Dom Wilfrid Wallace, an English priest who had lately joined the community, as head master. Dom Leo Linse became prior in 1SS2, and was succeeded in 1S86 by Dom Boniface Wolff, who was followed, in turn, by Dom Silvester Schlecht in 1895. On the feast of the Assumption, 1896, the priory was transformed into an abbey by a Brief of Leo XIII, though three years elapsed before it received an abbot. These were years of spiritual and material de- velopment. A novitiate was opened and a school for oblates, several members were added to the commu- nity, and a large addition made to the monastic build- ings. These comprised the abbot's apartments and chapel, rooms for guests, entrance hall, parlours, novi- tiate, and clericate. They were completed and blessed in 1898. In July, 1S99, Dom Ansgar Hockelmann was appointed its first abbot, and he was blessed in the abbey church on 3 Sept., by Bishop Ilsley of Birming- ham. Since then a spacious refectory and library have been built, and the community continues to grow.

The Church and Abbey of Erdington, A Record of fiftn years, 1850-1900 (Birmingham, 1900:i; Baxter. Erdinglon Abbey in the Catholic Fireside (London, 27 Dec, 1902).

Peter Nugent.

Erhard of Ratisbon, S.unt, bishop of that city in the seventh century, probably identical with an Ab- bot Erhard of Ebersheimmiinster mentioned in a Merovingian diploma of 681. Ancient documents call him also Erard and Herhard. The legendary account of his life offers little that is historically certain. The following, however, seems reliable. Erhard was born in Ireland, then known as "Scotia". Like many of his countrj-men he went to the Continent as mission- ary bishop or chorepiscopus, and coming to the Vosges met there St. Hildulf. said to have been Archbishop of Trier, and who lived there as a hermit (666-671). He is called Erhard's brother, but verj- likely spiritual relationship was meant. It is said that each of them founded seven monasteries. Thence Erhard went to Ratisbon and founded the nunnerj- of Xiedermiinster. By Divine inspiration he was recalled to the Rhineland to baptize St. Odilia, blind from her birth, but who re- ceived her eyesight at her baptism. He sent a mes- senger to her father, Duke .\ttich, and reconciled him with his disowned daughter. According to another account, St. Odilia was baptized by Hildulf, Erhard acting as her sponsor. The year of his death is not known. He was interred in the still-extant Erhard- crypt at Niedermimster, and miracles were wrought at his grave, that was guarded in the Middle Ages by " Erhardinonnen ", a religious community of women who observed there a perpetual round of prayer. Otto II, in 974, made donations of properties in the Danube valley to the convent "where the holy con- fessor Erhanrre-sts". On 7 Oct., 10.52, the remains of the holy bishops Erhard and Wolfgang were raised by Pope St. Leo IX in presence of Em|XTorHenrj-IIIand many bishops, a ceremony which was at that time equivalent to canonization. Ratisbon documents, however, mention only the raising of Wolfgang, not that of Erhard. At the close of the eleventh centurj-, Paul von Bernried, a monk of Fulda, at the suggestion of Abbess Heilika of Xiedermiinster, wrote a life of l^rhard and added a second book containing a num-

ber of miracles. The learned canon of Ratisbon, Con- rad of Mcgenberg (d. 1374), furnished a new edition of this work. The church in Niedermunster, now a par- ish church, still preserves the crosier of the saint, made of black buffalo-horn. A bone of his skull was enclosed in a precious receptacle in 1866 and is placed upon the heads of the faithful on his feast day, 8 Jan. Three ancient Latin lives of the saint are found in the .A.cta Sanctorum (SJan). The beautiful reliquarj' is reproduced in Jakob, " Die Kunst im Dienste der Ivirche" (illust. 16).

Geltinger, Kurze Lebensgeschichte des hi. Bischofes Erhardus (Ratisbon. ISTS); Sepp, Vita S. Hrodberti (1S91), 59 sqq.; Bibl. hag. lalma, 389.

Gabriel Meier. Eric the Red. See America, Pre-Coluiibl\n

DlSCO\'ERY OF.

Erie, Diocese of (Eriensis), established 1853; it embraces the thirteen counties of North-Westem Pennsylvania, V. S. A.: Erie, Crawford, Warren, McKean, Potter, Mercer, Venango, Forest. Elk, Cam- eron, Clarion, Jef- erson, and Clear- field, an area of 10,027 square miles.

This territory enjoys the distinc- tion of having been under three different national and ecclesiastical governments: un- der the French flag and the See of Quebec from 1753 to 1758; un- der the English flag and the Vicar- iate .\postolic of London from 1758 to the Treaty of Paris, 3 Septem- ber, 1783, and the erection of the See

of Baltimore in 1789; imder the .\merican flag since the Treaty of Paris and a part of the See of Baltimore until the establishment of the Diocese of Philadelphia in 1808. In August, 1843, when the Diocese of Pitts- burg was formed, it included all that part of the State of Pennsylvania west of a line rinining along the east- ern border of Bedford. Huntingdon, Clearfield, Elk, McKean, and Potter counties, and consequently, the territorj- of the present Diocese of Erie.

In 18"53 the Right Rev. Michael O'Connor, the first Bishop of Pittsburg, petitioned the Holy See. through the Fifth Provincial Council of Baltimore, for a di- vision of his diocese, and took for hiinself the poorest part, and thus became the first Bishop of the Diocese of Erie. When Bishop O'Connor assumed the govern- ment of the diocese, 29 July, 1853, there were only twenty-eight churches with eleven secular priests and three Benedictine Fathers to attend to the wajits of the Catholics scattered throughout the thirteen coun- ties. At the urgent ret^uest and petition of the priests and people of Pittsburg, Bishop O'Connor was restored to them, having governed the Diocese of Erie for the short period of seven months.

His successor at Erie was the Rev. Josue Moody Young, a member of an old Puritan, New England family, born 29 Oct., 180S. at Shapleigh. Maine. He became a convert from Congregationalism and was baptized in October, 1828. by the famous New Eng- land missionarj-. Father Charles D. Ffrench.O.P.. when he then changed the Moody of his name to Maria. He was ordained priest 1 .\pril, 1838, and consecrated second Bishop of Erie, in Cincinnati, by Archbishop

St. Peter's Cathedral, Erie