Our father among the saints, Sturm the Venerable of Fulda

Saint Sturm the Abbot, Apostle to the Saxons

Here is a rather insidious thought coming from a father of two. We have, in the Orthodox Church, two pre-Schismatic Western saints, a Saint Sturm (or Storm, or Sturmi, or Sturmius) and a Saint Cloud. That means that Orthodox parents could, potentially, canonically christen their son Storm Cloud. I don’t know why they would do so, since the sixties are over. But they could.

At any rate… Saint Sturm was of a noble Christian family of Herminionic German stock, coming from the most recent wave of folk who came to inhabit the former Roman province of Noricum which had been evangelised by Saint Severin. His parents gave him to Saint Boniface, who had come to lend his spiritual strength and his organisational genius to the Church in Noricum. Saint Boniface left the young Sturm in the town of Fritzlar, in the hands of the elderly monk, Saint Wihtberht.

Under Wihtberht’s tutelage, young Sturm studied the Psalter and learnt it by heart; he read the Scriptures continually and his progress in the spiritual life was rapid. He was ordained as a priest at the behest of the Benedictine brothers at Fritzlar, and thereafter undertook the tasks of travelling, preaching the Gospel, correcting heresies, exorcising dæmons, healing the sick and helping the poor. He gained the reputation of being a wonderworker in the days of his priesthood. After three years, he decided to remove himself from the world and live as a hermit, and went to consult with Saint Boniface. Sturm went to a deserted place which is now Bad Hersfeld, and there set up rough lean-to dwellings for himself and his followers; soon Bad Hersfeld became a hospitable habitation for the hermits. The holy bishop heard of Sturm’s progress and encouraged him to continue the eremitical discipline, but warned him to set up his hermitage instead at some remove from the march with the still-heathen Saxons. Taking Boniface’s wise rede to heart, Saint Sturm left Bad Hersfeld and began to seek out a place for a new hermitage, together with his pupils.

Sturm tried for some time to set up a hermitage at a site south of Bad Hersfeld, without success. Saint Boniface summoned him again as before, and they spoke together of spiritual matters as they ate; Saint Sturm reiterated to the Bishop his obedience and told him of his failures to find a suitable new site for a hermitage. Boniface bade the young hermit to continue his search with patience, that God would indeed provide for him a suitable spot. Sturm obeyed; he returned to his companions at the old hermitage, told him of what had passed between him and Boniface, and then set out on his own, on the back of a donkey and with no other shield but the name of Christ upon his lips.

He explored for several days, getting no forrader than he had gotten before. He did not despair, but instead continued his search, until he came at last to the current site of the monastery at Fulda. Every way pleased with the site that God had shown to him, he returned to his brothers rejoicing, and lost no time in telling Saint Boniface of the site he had found. Boniface too was pleased at the news, and went to the king of the Franks to ask their blessing to have the land consecrated to a monastery for Saint Sturm and seven of his eremitical brethren. That monastery was blessed and construction began in January of 744.

Saint Sturm thereupon embarked on a broad study of all the various rules of life for hermits and monks that could be found in the Christian world; this study included taking upon himself every rule before he would commend it to any of his companions, so that he would not be accused of taking an easier path and laying heavy burdens upon his brother. At last he settled upon the Rule of Saint Benedict as being the best-suited for his new community.

Ten years after the monastery at Fulda was founded, Saint Boniface while on his missionary works in Frisia was martyred, along with several of his followers, by an angry mob of heathen. When they heard of Saint Boniface’s death, the monks who were then at Utrecht came to claim his body and those of his followers, to inter the relics in a manner befitting a martyr of the Church. However, the bishop then of Mainz, Saint Lul, petitioned – and won – the right to have Saint Boniface’s relics translated thither. When Saint Sturm heard of this, he travelled to Mainz himself to petition the bishop to allow the remains of his beloved master to be buried at Fulda, the place ‘which by the will of God he had chosen for himself’.

Here hagiographical sources differ. The Vita of Saint Lul has it that he allowed Saint Sturm to take the relics of Saint Boniface back to Fulda with his blessing and goodwill; however, the Vita of Saint Sturm has it that a dispute arose between the bishop of Mainz and the monastic of Fulda – with the former arguing that Boniface be kept in Mainz and the latter arguing that Boniface be translated again to the monastery which he had founded. In the latter version, Saint Boniface himself intervenes in a vision to a deacon under Saint Lul, expressing his wish to be borne back to Fulda. After several more machinations to hold onto the relics, which even included having Saint Sturm removed from his abbacy and exiled to Jumièges by the Frankish king, Saint Lul reluctantly relinquished them. Regardless of which version is true, Saint Sturm was given the right to bear Saint Boniface’s relics back with him to Fulda, where they were interred with all due honour and reverence – and there it worked great wonders as Saint Boniface had done in life, to the glory of God and to the awe of those who lived the Benedictine life at the monastery at Fulda. Many English pilgrims made their way to Saint Sturm’s abbey at Fulda to pay honour to their saintly countryman.

In 774, toward the end of the holy abbot’s life, Charlemagne became ruler of the Franks, and undertook the conquest and forcible conversion of the Saxon people. Though Saint Sturm did his best to facilitate and ease that conversion, establishing churches and even monasteries among the people there (like the one at Hamelin), his work was broadly undercut by the punitive measures undertaken by the sæcular government against the Saxon people. The Saxon nobility still stubbornly clung to their heathen beliefs and rose in revolt against Charlemagne. The here they raised even threatened the abbey at Fulda with destruction; and Saint Sturm was called up in its defence.

The military and missionary demands that Charlemagne made upon Saint Sturm took their toll on the now-elderly monk’s health, and he fell ill while on campaign with the Frankish king. He begged to be returned to Fulda, and upon his return sensing death was near, he gathered his brothers about him and begged their forgiveness, as well as the forgiveness of any other man he had wronged. He in turn forgave all, and especially Bishop Lul with whom he had so often been at odds. After assuring his brethren of his prayers for them and sternly admonishing them to keep to the Rule, he reposed in the Lord on the 17^th of December, 779.

Saint Sturm may be a German of the Elbe stem, but he was beloved particularly by the English on account of his connexion to Saint Boniface and his kindness and hospitality to English pilgrims. He was even glorified by the Christians of the East, who rather connected him with Saint Severin and began to commemorate his holy life and deeds in the years shortly following his death. (The Roman Catholic Church began commemorating him in 1139.)

Scion of a worthy Bavarian family,
You were confided to the care of the Apostle of Germany,
Saint Boniface, who made you a holy priest.
You withdrew to the wild lands and to Fulda,
Where you undertook the enlightenment of the barbarians.
Venerable Sturm, intercede with God to save our souls!