Holy Hierarch Lul of Hersfeld

Statue of Saint Lul in Bad Hersfeld

Today on the New Calendar in the Orthodox Church we commemorate the West Saxon companion, friend and fellow-missionary to the Continent of Saint Boniface and sometime-rival of Saint Sturm of Fulda, Saint Lul of Hersfeld, the Bishop of Mainz.

Although he is nowadays commemorated primarily in Germany, Saint Lul was in fact born in England in 710 to wealthy West Saxon parents, who sent him to study at Saint Aldhelm’s monastery at Malmesbury, where he was tonsured a Benedictine monk. At the age of twenty-seven, he undertook a pilgrimage to Rome, where he met our holy father Boniface. Thereafter Lul became the spiritual son of Boniface; Lul went with Boniface to Frisia in order to assist the older English monk in proclaiming the Gospel to the people there. At first, Lul seems to have been attached to the Benedictine Kloster Sankt-Michaels in Ohrdruf which was founded by Saint Boniface in 724 and which was then under the care of Abbot Wihtberht. Lul was sent again to Rome in 751 to help secure for the monastery at Fulda complete political independence from meddlesome Frankish kings – and thereafter was appointed choir director in Mainz, also being Saint Boniface’s favourite to succeed him as bishop.

After the martyrdom of Saint Boniface at the hands of the heathen in Frisia in 754, Lul acceded to the bishopric in Mainz. He wanted the relics of his beloved starets translated from Dokkum to Mainz – though they ended up instead, by God’s will, at Fulda Monastery – and commissioned a Vita for Boniface. On the other hand, over the objections of Abbot Sturm, Lul expanded the Diocæse of Mainz to include the missions of Erfurt and Fritzlar which had been abandoned as a result of the incessant warfare between the Frankish kings and the heathen Saxon heretogs. The clash between these two strong-minded and strong-willed Teutonic personalities escalated during the 760s as Lul re-established a rival Benedictine house to Fulda at Bad Hersfeld and re-aligned himself with the Merovingian ruling family of Francia for the purposes of renewing missionary activity among the Saxons. At one point, perhaps in retaliation for having lost the argument with Abbot Sturm for Saint Boniface’s relics, Lul advised the Frankish king Pepin to have Abbot Sturm exiled to Jumièges for political disloyalty; Sturm bore this exile with equanimity and did not make any objection.

Abtei Hersfeld

As can be seen from this incident, the long dispute between Saint Sturm and Saint Lul may be seen to have a this-worldly political dimension. And in this matter their given names (Sturm or Storm; and Lul or Lull) seem to be quite ironically at odds with the temperaments of each man. Sturm, indeed, was a peaceful monk who preferred to employ peaceful means in mission. Lul, on the other hand, had few objections to political settlements that involved force.

Sturm was himself a Bavarian, and even if he did not condone the heathen practices and violence of his continental Saxon cousins, he still sympathised with them to an extent that he did not wish to see them converted to Christianity at the point of a sword. He apparently felt – not without reason – that his missionary efforts among the Saxons were hampered by Frankish political violence. Saint Lul, on the other hand, was much more the warrior-monk. He seems to have been much more comfortable leveraging the political power of the Franks to further the interests of the Church on Saxon territory, even acting as a political and military advisor to Karl the Big. This political ‘pivot’ did not go unrewarded: in 775 Karl gave Abtei Hersfeld under Bishop Lul the prestige and status of his Imperial patronage and protection, and later on Lul was given the right to translate the bones of Saint Wihtberht to Bad Hersfeld, which attracted great traffick of pilgrims to the monastery. Eventually, thanks to the efforts of both men, the dispute was reconciled, and on his deathbed Saint Sturm prayed with his monastic brothers, asked them to forgive him and also asked the forgiveness of Archbishop Lul for any offences he had done.

Lul was given an archbishop’s omophor as well by Pope Hadrian in 781. Though his religious feast, though, is instead kept on the first of June, he died five years later in peace among his brothers in Abtei Hersfeld, on the sixteenth of October 786 – which date is still kept in Germany as the oldest surviving folk festival in that country: Lullusfest. The great longevity of this festival among the folk of Bad Hersfeld and the enthusiasm with which they celebrate it every year are both signal indications of how deeply-loved the abbot and archbishop was among his adoptive people. Holy Father Lul, righteous missionary among the Germans, pray to Christ our God that our souls may be saved!