ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MARCH
Saints celebrated on the 6th 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.
SAINT FRIDOLIN OF SÄCKINGEN, ABBOT
Saint Fridolin was an Irish or Scottish abbot, who, leaving his own country, founded several monasteries in Austrasia, Burgundy, and Switzerland: the last was that of Säckingen, in an isle in the Rhine, now one of the four forest towns belonging to the house of Austria. In this monastery he died, in 538.
THE TUTELAR PATRON OF THE SWISS CANTON OF GLARUS
He is the tutelar patron of the Swiss canton of Glarus, who carry in their coat of arms his picture in the Benedictine habit, though he was not of that order.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA'S (1913) ENTRY ON ST FRIDOLIN
St Fridolin was a missionary, the founder of the Monastery of Säckingen, Baden (sixth century). In accordance with a later tradition, St Fridolin is venerated as the first Irish missionary who laboured among the Alamanni on the Upper Rhine, in the time of the Merovingians.
HIS VITA
The earliest documentary information we possess concerning him is the biography written by Balther, a Säckingen monk, at the beginning of the eleventh century. According to this life, Fridolin (or Fridold) belonged to a noble family in Ireland (Scottia inferior), and at first laboured as a missionary in his native land. Afterwards crossing to France, he came to Poitiers, where in answer to a vision, he sought out the relics of St Hilarius [St Hilary], and built a church for their reception.
ST HILARY APPEARED TO HIM IN A DREAM AND TOLD HIM TO MOVE ON
St Hilarius subsequently appeared to him in a dream, and commanded him to proceed to an island in the Rhine, in the territories of the Alamanni. In obedience to this summons, Fridolin repaired to the “Emperor” Clovis, who granted him possession of the still unknown island, and thence proceeded through Helion, Strasbourg, and Coire, founding churches in every district in honour of St Hilarius.
HE RECOGNISED THE ISLAND INDICATED IN HIS DREAM
Reaching at last the island of Säckingen in the Rhine, he recognised in it the island indicated in the dream, and prepared to build a church there. The inhabitants of the banks of the Rhine, however, who used the island as a pasturage for their cattle, mistook Fridolin for a cattle-robber and expelled him.
THEY FIRST THOUGHT THAT HE WAS A CATTLE-ROBBER
On his production of Clovis’s deed of gift, he was allowed to return, and to found a church and monastery on the island. He then resumed his missionary labours, founded the Scottish monastery in Constance, and extended his mission to Augsburg.
HIS HOLY DEATH
He died on March 6, and was buried at Säckingen. The writer of this legend professes to have derived his information from a biography, which he discovered in the cloister of Helera on the Moselle, also founded by Fridolin, and which, being unable to copy from want of parchment and ink, he had learned by heart.
HE MUST HAVE RELIED ON VERBAL TRADITION
This statement sounds very suspicious, and makes one conclude that Balther was compelled to rely on verbal tradition for the information recorded in his work. Not a single ancient author mentions Fridolin, the life has no proper historical chronological arrangement, and the enumeration of so many wonders and visions awakens distrust. Consequently, most modern historians justly reject the life as unauthentic, and as having no historical foundation for the facts recorded, while the older historians believed that it contained a germ of truth.
In the early Middle Ages, there was certainly some connection between Säckingen and Poitiers, from which the former monastery received its relics, and this fact may have made the author connect Fridolin with the veneration of St Hilarius of Poitiers, and the churches erected in his honour. The only portion of the life that can be regarded as historically tenable, is that Fridolin was an Irish missionary, who preached the Christian religion in Gaul, and founded a monastery on the island of Säckingen in the Rhine.
THE MONASTERY FOUNDED BY ST FRIDOLIN
Concerning the date of these occurrences, we have no exact information. The monastery, however, was of great importance in the ninth century, since the earliest extant document concerning it states that on February 10, 878, Charles the Fat presented to his wife Richardis the Monasteries of Säckingen, and of St Felix and of Regula in Zürich.
(📷: Glarus coat of arms - https://www.heraldry-wiki.com/heraldrywiki/wiki/Glarus_(canton))
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