medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
What is known about the Englishman Sualo (d. 794; also known as Solus and as Sola) comes chiefly from his Vita (BHL 7926) by Ermanric of Ellwangen, written between 839 and 842. According to Ermanric, who later became bishop of Passau, Sualo followed Boniface to Germany, was ordained priest by him, and became a solitary (no pun intended) in the diocese of Eichstätt in a place that became known as Cella Solonis ("Solo's Cell") and to which title was given him by none other than Charlemagne himself. Ermanric adds that Sts. Willibald and Winnebald gave property to Sualo after Boniface's death and that after Sualo's death all of his property was given by Charlemagne to the abbey of Fulda. The latter's necrology records Sualo's passing on 3. December. Notable among the miracles attributed to Sualo by Ermanric is a plainly allegorical one in which at his bidding an ass on which he had been riding attacks and kills a wolf that was threatening sheep grazing in a pasture with no shepherds present.
Cella Solonis is now Solnhofen (Lkr. Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen) in Bavaria. Perhaps better known as the town that Archaeopteryx made famous, it preserves the remains of a ninth-century church -- the so-called Solabasilika -- built over four predecessors going back to middle of the seventh century (the third church is thought to have been Sualo's oratory). A multi-page, German-language introduction to the site is here:
http://tinyurl.com/6xrdlk
And the Wikipedia.de page on Solnhofen has more to say on it:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solnhofen
along with this view:
http://tinyurl.com/35grx2
and this plan:
http://tinyurl.com/25hhron
The Solabasilika contains a fifteenth-century tomb (found to be empty when it was opened in 1828):
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Sola-Basilika.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ye9gsl9
Remains of four earlier tombs have been found at the site; one of these may have been the one into which Sualo's allegedly incorrupt remains were deposited by Fulda's prior at Cella Solonis shortly before the writing of Sualo's Vita.
In view of the time of year of this saint's feast it may be well to recall that, in the Northern Hemisphere at least, one Sualo doth not a summer make.
Best,
John Dillon
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