medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Utto (in Latin also Utho; in modern German also Udo) is remembered as the first abbot of the Benedictine abbey of St. Michael at Metten (Lkr. Deggendorf) in Bavaria, founded in about 766 on his own land by the nobly born priest Bl. Gamelbert. According to the latter's legendary Vita (BHL 3260; earliest witness is of the later twelfth century), Gamelbert had while traveling on pilgrimage to Rome baptized Utto when the latter was a little boy and had prophesied that Utto would be his heir; later, having first become an hermit and then having gathered a few followers into a monastic community, he died after having announced that his unnamed heir, who was not one of his hermit monks, would succeed him.
An also legendary late medieval account in the abbey's chronicle has the adult Utto travel from his native Italy to Bavaria and there become a hermit. Later, when Charlemagne had brought the duchy under his control, he met the bearded Utto at his cell in the woods and commanded him to establish a monastery. After further wandering Utto did just that at what had been Gamelbert's cell at Metten, with Utto becoming the community's first abbot. Modern accounts prefer a version of events in which at Gamelbert's request his younger relative and godson Utto came from Reichenau with twelve other monks and proceeded to establish the monastery. Utto was at the synod of Dingolfing in Bavaria in the 770s, where he joined a prayer association among monasteries that led to his name being among those recorded in 784 in a memorial book on the life of St. Virgil of Salzburg and, in 823 or 824, in the _Liber confraternitatum_ (German: Verbrüderungsbuch) of the abbey of Reichenau.
Utto's veneration at Metten was probably continuous from the date of his death (traditionally, 3. October 829) onward. The abbey there has an abbatial staff whose head, carved seemingly in the thirteenth century from walrus ivory, shows the agnus Dei standing atop an encircling great serpent-like beast; the object's wooden shaft bears both a rock crystal sphere and above that a bronze guard with a leonine hexameter inscription reading -- once the abbreviations have been resolved -- QVOD DOMINVS PETRO / PETRVS TIBI CONTVLIT VTTO ("What the Lord gave to Peter, Peter gave to you, Utto"). Herewith two views:
http://kloster-metten.de/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/_atk12771.jpg
http://kloster-metten.de/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/_atk12591.jpg
In the later Middle Ages Utto's remains reposed in a monumental tomb in the choir of the abbey church. His relics are now in a modern shrine in a niche behind the altar; the tomb's fourteenth-century sarcophagus, with its recumbent figure of Utto on the lid, is in the cloister.
Three views from 1935, when the tomb was still in the choir:
http://www.bildindex.de/obj20667987.html#|home
Four more recent detail views (head, torso, arms):
http://www.kloster-metten.de/?page_id=1622&layout_id=1
Utto's cult was confirmed papally in 1909 at the level of _beatus_. Celebrated liturgically on this day in churches of the Benedictine family and in the diocese of Regensburg, he entered the Roman Martyrology in its revision of 2001.
Best,
John Dillon
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