ST ERHARD, BISHOP OF REGENSBURG - 8 JANUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JANUARY

Saints celebrated on the 8th January

Prayer to the Angels and the Saints

Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.

In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.

Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.

Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.

ST ERHARD, BISHOP OF REGENSBURG 

St Erhard was bishop of that city in the seventh century; he is probably identical with an Abbot Erhard of Ebersheimmunster mentioned in a Merovingian diploma of 684. Ancient documents call him also Erard and Herhard.

The legendary account of his life offers little that is historically certain. The following, however, seems reliable. 

RELIABLE FACTS

Erhard was born in Ireland, then known as "Scotia". Like many of his countrymen he went to the Continent as missionary bishop or chorepiscopus, and coming to the Vosges met there St Hildulf, said to have been Archbishop of Trier, and who lived there as a hermit (666-671). 

He is called Erhard’s brother, but very likely spiritual relationship was meant. It is said that each of them founded seven monasteries. 

HE FOUNDED THE NUNNERY OF NIEDERMUNSTER

Thence Erhard went to Ratisbon [Regensburg] and founded the nunnery of Niedermunster [Niedermünster].

By Divine inspiration he was recalled to the Rhineland to baptise St Odilia, blind from her birth, but who received her eyesight at her baptism. He sent a messenger to her father, Duke Attich, and reconciled him with his disowned daughter. According to another account, St Odilia was baptised by Hildulf, Erhard acting as her sponsor. 

THE YEAR OF HIS DEATH IS NOT KNOWN

The year of his death is not known. He was interred in the still-extant Erhard-crypt at Niedermunster, and miracles were wrought at his grave, that was guarded in the Middle Ages by "Erhardinonnen", a religious community of women who observed there a perpetual round of prayer. Otto II, in 974, made donations of properties in the Danube valley to the convent "where the holy confessor Erhard rests". 

On October 7, 1052 the remains of the holy bishops Erhard and Wolfgang were raised by Pope St Leo IX in presence of Emperor Henry III and many bishops, a ceremony which was at that time equivalent to canonisation. Ratisbon documents, however, mention only the raising of Wolfgang, not that of Erhard. 

THE CHURCH STILL PRESERVES HIS CROSIER

At the close of the eleventh century, Paul von Bernried, a monk of Fulda, at the suggestion of Abbess Heilika of Niedermunster, wrote a life of Erhard and added a second book containing a number of miracles. The learned canon of Ratisbon, Conrad of Megenberg (died 1374), furnished a new edition of this work. 

The church in Niedermunster, now a parish church, still preserves the crosier of the saint, made of black buffalo-horn. A bone of his skull was enclosed in a precious receptacle in 1866 and is placed upon the heads of the faithful on his feast day, January 8. Three ancient Latin lives of the saint are found in the Acta Sanctorum (January 8). 

(From Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)