Baring-Gould’s sources: Venerated at Cologne. Authorities: — A life by a monk of the same monastery and a contemporary. This life is made up of two parts, that concerning his youth, and that concerning his monastic life, and this latter portion appears to have been written first. Another life in verse, by William Vriessenich, composed in 1358. There are others, later, of less authority.] The Blessed Hermann was the child of poor parents in Cologne. From an early age his delight was to be in church. A pretty story of the little Hermann is told by the chronicler of his life. The child once entered the church with a rosy apple in his hand, which had been given to him. He went up to an image of the Virgin Mother, seated with her Divine Son on her knee, held out the apple to the Holy Child, and placed it in his hand. We may probably attribute to the imagination of the little boy the incident of the image closing His stony hand upon the apple, in token of acceptance.
April).] B. Hermann Joseph. One day Hermann fell asleep in Church, looking at some statues, above the pulpit, of S. John the Evangelist, S. Mary the Virgin, and the Child Jesus. In his dream the figures began to move, and S. Mary and S. John to play with the Holy Child. Then the B. Virgin, noticing the little boy below, beckoned to him, and leaning down gave him her hand, to help him up to where they were, and then S. Mary and S. John sat down, and left Hermann to play with the Child Jesus.
Another charming story of the childhood of the little Hermann is this. One cold winter's day he came to church with bare feet through the snow, and knelt down and fell into a trance. Then he saw the Virgin Mother standing before him; and she said, “ My child, why art thou barefooted?” “Because I have not got a pair of shoes,” replied Hermann. “ There, child,” said the Holy Viigin, pointing to a stone, “ thou wilt find money yonder for the purchase of shoes. And whenever thou needest money for boots or slates or pencils, (calceis, tabulis, aut stylis) or any other things necessary to thee, go to that stone, and there thou wilt find pennies.” This was related by Hermann to the writer of his life a few days before he died. At the age of twelve, Hermann entered the Order of Premontr^, or Norbertine Canons, at Steinfeld, in the diocese of Cologne, and was sent into Friesland to complete his education. A curious story is told by his biographers of his life there. The boy was troubled with a painful and distressing eruption on the head which made him ashamed of appearing among his fellow-scholars. But one night, “when he had given his little body sleep, he felt some animal, — I know not whether reptile or bird,— come and with its beak remove the unpleasant scab, gently, and the pious boy was uninjured by this corrosion, nay, on the contrary, was healed thereby.’” The words are those of his biographer.
nS Lives of ike Saints. lApm*. He returned to Steinfeld as he was growing out of boyhood, and was set to serve in the refectory. He had now no time for reading, and little for praying, so that even the offices to the recitation of which he was bound were obliged to be left unsaid. This troubled him. greatly, but he was told in answer to prayer, by the Virgin Mother, “ Nothing that thou canst do is more precious than to serve the brethren in love.”
From the refectory he was in course of time exalted to the more congenial custody of the sacristy. He had now leisure for contemplation and prayer, and he began at the same time to fall into ecstasies and see visions. It is said that one morning at Lauds, as the Benedictus was being sung, he was sensible of an exquisite odour of incense. This surprised him, as in the Norbertine Order incense is offered at the Benedictus only on the feasts of the Nativity, Easter, Pentecost, and the Dedication. And lo I he saw two angels with censers wafting fragrance, and going down the line of the friars, they bowed to and censed some, but passed by others, according as they prayed, or were occupied in mind with worldly matters.
The heart of the Blessed Hermann was wholly given to his dear heavenly Mother. Her radiant form shone on him as the moon in the night, and lightened before him in the day. He composed prayers to her, and sang hymns in her honour, and loved to call himself her chaplain. And in return she visited and watched him, and once, when he had been bled in the arm, and, in sleep had flung himself on the wounded arm so as to endanger the bandages, she stood before the sleeper’s eyes, and touched him, and bade him turn over, and lie on the other side. He became so absorbed in his devotion to the Immaculate Virgin, that he was incessantly falling into raptures, in which he saw her, and at night she was present in his dreams. The highly April).] B. Hermann Joseph.
excited, nervous condition of the mystic laid him open to such influences. It will not do for us to accept as true all the extraordinary visions he is reported to have seen, especially as some of these are of an eccentric and questionable character; as for instance his marriage with the B. Virgin, performed by an Angel, who joined their hands and said, 44 See, I give thee this virgin in marriage, as she was married to Joseph; whose name do thou take to thyself as thou receivest his bride.” After this vision Hermann adopted the name of Joseph, and in addressing Our Lady, was wont to call her “Rose.” Whenever he thought much of her, her form appeared before him full oj beauty, but when he was distracted by worldly cares, she appeared to him as an old woman with wrinkles. But perhaps the absurdity of the writer of this memoir reaches its greatest bathos, when he narrates how the B. HermannJoseph possessed himself of two heads of young damsels of the company of S. Ursula, which were discovered in his time, and how these two skulls were put in a box, and the box being accidentally set on the ground, some one visiting Hermann-Joseph, ignorant of what it contained, sat down on the box. But the lid burnt him like a plate of red-hot iron, and he jumped up in alarm and pain, and thus ascertained that he had been guilty of irreverence to two maidens of a saintly company.
Hermann-Joseph was ordained priest, and when he offered the holy sacrifice, was remarkable for his great reverence and devotion. A friar once found him standing lost in meditation before the altar, vested, and with tapers burning, an hour after he had finished saying mass. In his absence of mind he had forgotten to return to the vestry. His reverence was carried to an extravagance which must strike even the most devout as grotesque; for he used to pare off his finger nails, and shave off the hair of his upper iji— >f< lip, and keep the nail parings and scraps of hair reverently, because they had touched the Holy Sacrament A pretty story is told of him when offering the holy Sacrifice on a bitter winter day. He was long engaged in private devotion before the altar, and a nun in the church saw in vision our Lord on one side of him, and S. Mary on the other, chafing his numbed hands between their own. She told Hermann what she had seen, but he assured her that he had been quite unconscious of the cold, and had seen nothing of what she described.
Hermann was exceedingly skilful in making clocks, and many places were supplied with time-pieces of his manufacture. He also composed a commentary on the Song of Solomon, and some other treatises on sublime contemplation, which give us a truer insight into the real power and excellence of the man than the unfortunate “ life ” by his fellow-canon. In this life there is much that is beautiful and wholesome, but there is more that is offensive; what is objectionable, we may hope is to be attributed to the want of judgment of the writer.
Before his death he was afflicted with great nervous agitation, so that, for some time, he was obliged to desist from saying mass. He was especially alarmed at the appearance of spiders and flies, which filled him with nervous trepidation, supposing that the devils were disguised under their forms.
The relics [the bodily remains of a saint, or objects they used, kept with honor] of Hermann-Joseph are preserved at Steinfeld, but portions are at Cologne and in Antwerp. His presentation of an apple to the Blessed Virgin or Holy Child is a favourite subject of representation with artists. •SVS. Herodion, Asyncritus, &c.
