Saint Frideric of Utrecht
The eighteenth of July in the Orthodox Church is the feast day of Saint Frideric, the martyred Frisian bishop of Utrecht. The grandson of the heathen Redbad, king of the Frisians, Frideric was raised from an early age among the clergy of Utrecht, who taught him by the holy books that lay in their possession. A pious and fastidious youth, with a certain proud and stubborn streak no doubt inherited from his mighty heathen forebear, he was known for taking upon himself vigils, fasting and ascetic disciplines well in excess of what was expected of a pupil his own age. As a young man, he was ordained priest by Bishop Ricfride, and placed in charge of the young catechumens of Utrecht.
Upon Ricfried’s repose, Frideric was chosen as bishop – the eighth Bishop of Utrecht in the apostolic succession from Saint Willibrord – at a folkmoot. With tears and entreaties, Frideric declared to the gathered throng that he was unworthy and unqualified to be a bishop; however, the Frankish king Clovis the Fair compelled the Frisian priest to accept the office. Having received this command which he dared not reject, Frideric retreated to Mainz where he received the omophor from his ecclesiastical superior, Metropolitan Hadewulf, in the presence of all the bishops and Clovis. He was then enjoined with taking the Gospel into the northern reaches of Frisia, which were as yet mired in heathenry.
Frideric, despite his own assertions to the contrary, proved to be a capable and compassionate archpastor of the Frisian flock. He certainly put his erudition and book-learning to good use. He maintained a friendly scholarly correspondence with the Benedictine intellectual Metropolitan Hrabanus Maurus of Mainz, and he also penned a Life of his predecessor Saint Boniface. He was well-beloved among the common folk, but he made himself something of a nuisance among the as-yet-heathen notables of Walcheren by preaching against consanguineous marriages. The heathen Frisian hathelings often contracted such close kin marriages among themselves, and Saint Frideric and his missionaries often found themselves in an uphill battle opposing such liaisons.
On the eighteenth of July, 838, just after Frideric had celebrated the Liturgy and retired into the chapel of Saint John the Baptist to pray his private devotions, two men approached him, grabbed him by the shoulder and stabbed him in the stomach. Within a few minutes he gave up the ghost, and the words of Psalm 116 were upon his lips: ‘I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.’ Where these two godless assassins came from, and who sent them, is unclear – but there are two likely possibilities. The first is that they were sent by the heathen of Walcheren, who were hostile to Saint Frideric and his missions. The second is that they were sent by the Empress Judith of Bavaria – and this requires a bit more explication.
Clovis King’s policy toward the newly-conquered Saxons and Frisians was far more lenient than his father Karl’s had been, and was aimed at undoing some of the damage that had been wrought by Karl’s heavy-handed treatment of the heathen Saxons. He lightened their taxes and issued an amnesty to Saxons who had been condemned or outlawed. This made Frideric’s job of converting the heathen a good deal eather. However, he divided his father’s empire between himself and his three sons by his first wife Irmingard: his eldest Lothair was given Middle Francia and [northern] Italy; his second Pippin was given Aquitaine; and his youngest Clovis II was given East Francia [Germany]; while he kept West Francia for himself.
Clovis père remarried a Bavarian beauty named Judith, who bore him a son named Karl ‘the Bald’: later king of West Francia. Judith was a remarkably quick and adept student of Frankish court intrigues, and deftly leveraged her power and influence with her consort to advance the interests of her biological son Karl against those of her stepchildren. She so provoked Lothair and Pippin and Clovis fils that they broke their filial bonds and rose in open revolt against their father. Contemporary commentators were therefore markedly hostile to Judith, whom they saw as an immoral and power-hungry Jezebel, willing to plunge the land of the Franks into civil war to sate her greed and lust. However, if Saint Frideric did indeed ever issue such Chrysostom-like homiletics against Judith, these are no longer extant to a modern readership. As a result, though contemporary authorities seem to prefer the latter theory that the assassins of Saint Frideric were sent by Judith, modern historians seem to prefer the theory that they were agents of the heathens of Walcheren.
Regardless of which theory holds true, Saint Frideric did indeed die as a martyr proclaiming the truth of Christ, against the self-interest, greed and sexual indulgence of the rich and powerful. His relics were interred with great honour in the same Sint-Salvatorkerk at Utrecht where he had served with earnest goodwill his entire life. Holy and righteous hieromartyr Frideric, witness to the good news of Christ among the heathen, entreat Christ our God to have mercy upon us!
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