medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The Bavarian Sturmius (d. 779; in German, Sturm and Sturmi) was a disciple of St. Boniface of Mainz and the first abbot of Fulda. According to his probably late eighth-century Vita by Eigil, the fourth abbot (BHL 7924), he was of noble birth, had been entrusted to Boniface as an infant, and had been educated at the monastery at today's Fritzlar (Lkr. Schwalm-Eder-Kreis) in northern Hessen. After his ordination to the priesthood he engaged for about three years in pastoral and missionary work and then with two companions became an hermit somewhat further to the southeast in today's Bad Hersfeld. At Boniface's behest, Sturmius began to search the area for a site at which to found a new monastery.
That site turned out to be in a forest in what is now Fulda, south of Hersfeld in the same river valley. In 744 king Carloman granted the land and Sturmius began work on what would become one of the leading monasteries in eastern Francia and later in Germany. In 747/48 Sturmius was in Rome and then at Montecassino in order to become familiar with that abbey's routines. Boniface was responsible for the first of the next two actions that secured the abbey's immediate future: a successful appeal in 751 to pope St. Zachary to make it an abbey _nullius_. The second action was Sturmius' doing: insuring that Boniface (d. 754) would be buried at Fulda and not in Mainz.
Sturmius worked well with Charlemagne, from whom he received confirmation of the abbey's possessions and of its freedom to choose its own abbot. He was one of the planners of missionary campaigns in Saxony in conjunction with Charlemagne's campaigns there. Sturmius died at Fulda and was buried in his basilica (replaced between 791 to 819 by the so-called Ratgar-Basilika). He was canonized in 1139 at Lateran II. Today (17. December) is Sturmius' feast day in the diocese of Fulda and his day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
Sturmius as depicted (at right; at left, St. Boniface of Mainz) in the mid-twelfth-century Codex Eberhardi (betw. 1150 and 1160; Marburg, Staatsarchiv, Codex Eberhardi, vol. 2, fol. 6r):
http://tinyurl.com/hdoqdbv
Best,
John Dillon
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