Baring-Gould’s sources: German Martyrologies. Authority: — A Life written by Ermenold, or Ermanric, abbot of Elwangen (d. 866), in Mabillon, Acta SS. O. S. B. Solus was an Englishman, who followed S. Boniface into Germany, and was ordained priest, by him. He sought out a solitary place near the banks of the Altmuhl in Bavaria, and fashioned for himself there a simple cell. The place was not unattractive, with the winding river, clear as crystal, the beautiful, though not lofty hills,1 with broken limestone rocks peeping through the brushwood. The Romans had worked quarries there,2 and they were not, probably, then wholly deserted. Solus may have served as missionary to the rude quarrymen, and mused and wondered over the fossils he found in the rocks they chipped, fish as distinct as if killed the other day, and the impress and bones of the pterodactyl, or flying lizard. No doubt he pointed to them as proofs of the Deluge.

Solus found that the Altmuhl abounded in trout, ai^l especially in huge crayfish. Charlemagne [king of the Franks, crowned emperor in 800] heard of his virtues, and gave him a grant of the land all round his cell Willibold, bishop of Eichstadt, not many miles distant, regarded his fellow countryman with great respect, so did also the bishop’s brother Wunebald.

His biographer tells an odd story about him, which he heard from some old people of the neighbourhood. Solus was one day travelling with his ass, when he came to a place where sheep were pasturing without their shepherd, who had deserted them for a while. Suddenly the ass pricked up its ears, erected its tail, and dashed out of the road.3 Solus looked round, and saw a wolf crouching under a tree, watching the sheep. Then Solus called to his ass, “ In the name of my Lord Jesus Christ, O jackass, I command you, that you attack the beast lying under that fruit tree, plotting destruction to the sheep !”4 Neddy at once arrested his '• " Undique alpibus celsis circumseptus est,” an exaggeration of Ermenold. 2 “Caepit asseUus aures vicissim erigere, dein offensis pedibus caput in altum ex tend ere; ad extremum elevata cauda dedivis per avia currere csepit.** 4 “ In nomine Domini mei Jesu Christi, O asine, praecipio tibi, ut concito cursu irruas in earn bestiam quse sub frutice latet, insidiando insciis bidentibus.** precipitate career, dashed up to the startled wolf, and assailed him with hoofs and teeth. The shepherds arrived whilst this strange duel was going on, and watched in amused surprise till the ass stood panting, exultant, and bloody over the corpse of the ravenous beast. Solus departed to his Lord on the 3rd December, about the year 790. A chapel was built where his oratory had stood, and his body was taken up and enshrined by the authority of Pope Gregory IV., in or about the year 830. Solnhoven became afterwards a monastery subject to Fulda.