ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN SEPTEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 5th of September
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 ALTO OF IRELAND, ABBOT
Saint Alto was a Scottish holy monk, who, travelling into Germany, was famous for many miracles, and founded, by the liberality of King Pepin, the abbey of Altmünster in Bavaria, about the middle of the eighth century.
THE PERFECT MAXIMS AND SPIRIT OF HOLY RELIGION
In the midst of a barbarous nation, at that time overrun with ignorance, vice, and superstition, the extraordinary humility and devotion of this saint infused into many the perfect maxims and spirit of holy religion, and his single life was a sensible demonstration of the power of divine grace in raising vessels of weakness and corruption to the most sublime state of sanctity.
HIS FEAST DAY
He is honoured in Germany on February 9, which seems to have been the day of his death. But the British calendars commemorate him on September 5. The abbey of Altmünster was repaired and given to Bridgetine nuns in the fifteenth century.
The Scottish clergy founded many monasteries in Germany, one at Cologne, in 975, under the invocation of St Martin; one at Erfurt in 1036; two at Ratisbon, one at Würzburg, one at Nuremberg, one at Vienna, and one at Aistacht, etc.
In some modern writers we read of a solemn league entered into between Charlemagne, emperor of the West, and Achaius, king of Scotland; but the whole is a manifest forgery, picked up somewhere by Hector Boethius, as the learned Mr O’Flaherty has proved against Sir George Mackenzie.
"HIBERNIA SCOTORUM INSULA"
Till the conquest of the Pictish kingdom, A. D. 842, the royal race of Fergus, the son of Eirc, bore only the title of Kings of Albany. In Charlemagne’s time, the name of Scotia was confined to Ireland alone, as Usher has proved; and Eginhard, secretary to Charlemagne, expressly denominates Ireland, "Hibernia Scotorum insula;" he likewise informs us of the several letters of the Scottish kings to that emperor; of their great deference to his will, and the affection they declared towards him.
The country of the Scots in Britain, during this period, was too inconsiderable to form alliances with foreign princes, the far better part of North Britain being still in possession of the Picts.
IRELAND WAS THE PRIME SEAT OF LEARNING IN ALL CHRISTENDOM
Ireland was then, as the learned Prideaux remarks, the prime seat of learning in all Christendom; and it was from thence that Charlemagne invited the learned professors, Clement and John, the one founder of the university of Paris, and the other of the university of Pavia in Italy.
[SCOTTISH MISSIONARIES TO GERMANY]:
Amongst the Scots who settled in Germany, and made a rapid progress in the conversion of infidels, several were raised to the episcopal dignity; as
1. St Sidonius bishop of Passau, who was the companion of St Virgilius of Salzburg, and who is mentioned in the life of this saint published by Canisius.
2. St Tanco, third bishop of Verden, who was martyred in 815, and is honoured on February 16.
3. St. Patto, who succeeded Swidbert in the see of Verden: he was in great favour with Charlemagne, and is mentioned in the Scottish and German calendars on March 13 and March 30. Molanus asserts that both Tanco and Patto were ranked by the pope in the number of the saints, in the time of Havunch, eighth bishop of Verden.
MARIANUS SCOTUS SETTLED AT RATISBON
In the eleventh age Marianus Scotus (who is proved by Usher to have been a Scot from Ireland) having left the monastery of Dunkeld in North Britain, went to Germany and settled at Ratisbon, where he, with several of his countrymen, taught both sacred and profane learning, and where he founded a monastery for the Scots in 1074.
PIETY, ZEAL, AND KNOWLEDGE
Aventius gives a detailed account of the great reputation which these Scots had acquired by their piety, zeal, and knowledge.
Henry, surnamed the Lion, first duke of Austria, charmed with the piety of the Scottish monks, invited several of them to Vienna, where he founded, in 1144, a magnificent abbey under the Rule of Saint Benedict which he designed for the burial-place of his family. There are still to be seen in the church his own tomb, with those of his wife Theodora, (daughter to the emperor Emanuel Comnenus,) of his two sons Leopold and Henry, and of his daughter Agnes.
(Excerpts from Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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