BL. FROWIN OF ENGELBERG, ABBOT - 27 MARCH

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MARCH

Saints celebrated on the 27th of March

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.

BL. FROWIN OF ENGELBERG, ABBOT

[Blessed Frowin was a] Benedictine abbot. He died March 11, 1178. Of the early life of Frowin nothing is known, save that he is claimed as a monk of their community by the historians of the two great Benedictine abbeys of Einsiedeln in Switzerland and St Blasius in Baden. 

HE SUCCEEDED ST ADELHELM

The first authentic fact in his career is his election as abbot, the year 1142, to succeed St Adelhelm in the newly established monastery of Engelberg in the Canton of Unterwalden, Switzerland. 

ITS RENOWN SPREAD FAR AND WIDE

As abbot Frowin was conspicuous for sanctity, learning and administrative ability. Through his efforts the possessions and privileges, civil and ecclesiastical, of the abbey were greatly increased, while its renown as a home of learning, art, and piety spread far and wide. 

THE SCHOOL

Himself a man of great intellectual endowments thoroughly versed in all the science, sacred and profane, of his time, he established a famous school in his abbey, in which besides the trivium and quadrivium, philosophy and theology were likewise taught. 

THE LIBRARY

The library which he collected possessed, for those days, a vast number of manuscripts. According to a list that he himself has left us, it contained Homer, Cicero, Cato, Ovid and other authors of antiquity. This rich collection perished in 1729, when the abbey was destroyed by fire. 

HIS WRITINGS

Blessed Frowin not only copied books for his library, but composed several. Two of these, a commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, and a treatise in seven books, “De Laude Liberi Arbitrii” (“In Praise of Free Will”, but in reality a discussion of the chief theological questions of his day, directed, it is thought, against the errors of Abelard) are still extant, having been discovered by Mabillon in the archives of Einsiedeln. Frowin’s other works, Commentaries on the Ten Commandments and various parts of Holy Scripture, are lost. Though never formally beatified, Frowin has commonly been styled “Blessed” by the chroniclers. 

(From Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)