Baring-Gould’s sources: Not in Ancient Martyrologies earlier than the iath cent. The first to mention him is an Utrecht Marty rology of that century, which inserts him on Nov. 6th. But July 7th seems to be the day on which he was anciently venerated at Eichstadt. The Roman Martyrology contains a strange error. It says “At Eichstadt in Saxony." Eichstadt is not in Saxony at all, but in Franconia. Authorities -.—First, and by far the most precious authority, is the Hodceporicon or itinerary of S. Wilibald, a contemporary document, written by a nun of Heidenheim, of whose name we are ignorant, but who was his kinswoman, and took the account of his travels from his own recital. This life, written before his death, became afterwards the foundation of various other lives which are here mentioned, but which contain few or no new facts. A life by Adalbert, abbot of Heidenheim, cca. 1150; another by an anonymous writer, a mere reproduction of the Hodaeporicon in other words; another by Philip, bishop of Eichstadt, in the 14th cent. With the life of S. Willibald must be compared that of his brother S. Wunibald, written by the nun of Heidenheim, the authoress of the Hodceporicum.] S. Willibald, who is said to have been a kinsman of the great S. Boniface, was, like him, a native of the Jringdom of Wessex. Boniface was bom at Crediton, in £ Willibald.
Devonshire, and perhaps Devon may also lay claim to having produced the apostle of Franconia. He was born about the year 700, or soon afterwards, and having with difficulty struggled through the ailments of infancy, at the age of three was taken by his parents, despairing of his life, before a cross, and there dedicated to the service of Christ. 1 From this time he improved in health and strength, and when he was five years of age his father, in fulfilment of his vow, placed him in a monastery at Waltheim (perhaps Bishop's Waltham in Hampshire), under the care of Abbot Egbald. He there made great progress in learning, and was beloved for his virtues. As he grew up to boyhood, the desire of travelling in foreign lands became a passion with him; and, to indulge it, his father sold his possessions, and went with his family, consisting of Wunibald, his eldest son, then aged twenty, Willibald, and his daughter Walburga, together with a number of friends, to settle at Rome. They left England towards the beginning of summer, probably in the year 718, and having taken ship on the southern coast at HameleaMuth (the mouth of the river Hamble that flows past Waltham), near a port town called Hambich or Hamwich (Southampton), 2 after a prosperous passage, they entered the river Seine, and landed at Rouen, where they remained some days. They then proceeded slowly through France, and arrived at Lucca, where Willibald's father Richard 3 died.
1 ** Sic mos cat Saxonies; gent is, quod in nonnullia nobilium, bonorutnque hominum pr*diis non ecdeaiam, sed Sanctae Crucia aignum, Domino dicatum, cam magno honore almum, in alto erectum, ad commodam diurn* orationia sedalitatem, eolent habere.** Hodctpor. 1 Hambich ia a mistake of the copyist for Hamwich. aad reiterated at Lucca as a king. There ia ( however, no evidence that he was anything bat a man of noble family.
After having buried their parent honourably in the church of S. Frigidian at Lucca, the two brothers continued their journey on foot, and by a long and circuitous route, crossing the Alps, reached Rome in safety. But soon after their arrival they were attacked by fever, under which they languished for a long time, and the effects they were not able easily to shake off. After their recovery Willibald determined to continue his travels, and visit the Holy Land.
It was probably about the end of April, 721, when, having separated himself from his brother and joined two persons desirous of performing the same pilgrimage, Willibald left Rome and visited successively the towns of Terracina, Gaeta, and Eboli. At the latter place he waited a fortnight before a ship bound for Egypt arrived on the coast, and then, having embarked with his companions, they proceeded to Reggio in Calabria, from whence they crossed over to Catania in Sicily. During the stay he had the opportunity of observing the first burning mountain he had ever seen, Etna; and it struck him as marvellous that when the mountain erupts, the inhabitants of Catania should be able to arrest the flow of lava by exposing the veil of S. Agatha. At the end of three weeks they left Sicily, and after touching at Samos, proceeded to Ephesus, where they visited the cave of the Seven Sleepers, whose legend was even then spread over all Christian Europe. From Ephesus they walked along the sea coast to Siglia, a large town, where “ having obtained bread, they went to a fountain that springs up in the midst of the city, and sitting down there dipped their crusts in the water, and ate them.” Thence they walked still along the coast to Strobole, “ a town on a high mountain,” and by Patara to Mytelene by ship, after having passed the Jrfyy.1 S. Willibald.
winter at Patara. At Mytelene the travellers were much edified by seeing two stylites. 1 From Mytelene they sailed to Cyprus, at that time the frontier between the dominions of the Saracens [medieval Christian name for Arab and Muslim peoples] and the Greeks. They passed the first week of the year 722 at Paphos, and then removed to a town named Constantia, where they remained to recruit their strength, till the nativity of S. John the Baptist (June 24th).
About the end of June, the travellers crossed the sea to Tortosa, where they entered the jurisdiction of the Saracens; and they walked ten or twelve miles, without meeting with any obstruction, to a fortified place named Areas, the see of a Greek bishop. They also performed on foot the twelve miles between this place and Emessa, where they were seized by the Saracens and carried before the Kalif Yezid.* They were liberated at the intercession of a Spaniard who held a place of honour in the Kalif s household, and of the captain of the ship in which they had sailed from Cyprus.
After Willibald had visited the church built by S. Helena in honour of S. John the Baptist, whose head was long preserved there, “but is now at Syris,” he went to Damascus, where he remained a week, and he was shown at a distance of two miles from the city the spot where S. Paul had been struck down to the earth and converted. From Damascus he turned his steps to Palestine; and, after visiting the scene of the Annunciation, he arrived at Nazareth, the church of which, as he was informed, was only saved from destruction by 1 The passage Is obscure. ** Ibl sedebant duo solitarii* in stulite* Id est, fabricata atque firmata cum muro magno de lapidibus, ralde summo, ut aqua lUls nocere non poesit.”
stand the language* took the title for the name of the king* and calls him Mlrmumni. paying a ransom to the Saracens. He next visited Cana, where our Saviour changed the water into wine, and where he found a large church, the altar of which was made of one of the six vessels used on the occasion of the miracle. 1 Willibald remained there one day, and then visited the monastery of Mount Tabor, dedicated to u God, Moses, and Elias.” He afterwards spent some days at Tiberias, where he found a church and a synagogue of the Jews. He then visited Magdala, Capernaum, and Bethsaida, at which last-mentioned town was a church of which the ruins still remain, and, having spent the night there, he proceeded in the morning to Chorazin, where was also a church. He next visited the head of the Jordan, and passed a night in company with the shepherds between the two sources of the river, called Jor and Dan. The shepherds gave him sour ewes’ milk to drink,* and he remarked with interest that their sheep were different from the sorts he had seen in Europe, for they were long-backed, shortlegged, and had great erect horns. When the sun was hot the sheep were wont to run down into the oyster ponds and remain under water with only their heads exposed.
From this place he went to Caesarea, where he found a church and multitudes of Christians. Willibald’s next journey was to the monastery of S. John in the desert Quarantania, which was inhabited by twenty monks. He slept one night in the monastery, and in the morning walked to the part of the river Jordan where Christ was baptized, which is distant a mile from the monastery. Willibald found there a church constructed on ' Probably it served as a pedestal to the altar-slab. dictation by Si Willibald, u Ibi morabantur unaxn noctem Inter duos fontcs, et pastores dabant mbU acrura lac bibere.'* pillars over the spot where the event was supposed to have taken place. There he saw a rope stretched across Jordan, which people might hold when bathing in the river; and he was told that on the feast of the Epiphany crowds of sick people and sterile women came there to bathe. Willibald at once took off his clothes and bathed in Jordan with the assistance of the rope. Five miles from there he found the wooden church of Galgala, built over the twelve stones that Joshua took up out of Jordan when the people passed over dry-shod. And seven miles further he came to Jericho, where he saw the fountain blessed and healed by Elisha, and so he reached the monastery of S. Eustace, half-way to Jerusalem from Jericho, and there he rested a night and went forward on the morrow to the Holy City. Willibald arrived at Jerusalem on the feast of S. Martin [St. Martin of Tours (d. 397), soldier turned bishop] (Nov. nth); but he was immediately afterwards attacked by a serious illness, by which he was confined to his bed till the week before Christmas, when he offered up thanks for his recovery in the church of Zion. 1 He went from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, visiting on his way a church in the valley of Jehosaphat, and another on the Mount of Olives; and he was also shown the spot where the angel appeared to the shepherds, to announce the birth of the Redeemer. At Bethlehem 1 At Jerusalem he saw ** before the gate of the city a cross, as sign and memorial that there the Jews tried to carry off the body of S. Mary. When the twelve apostles carrying the body of S. Mary bore it to Jerusalem, and had come to the gate of the city, the Jews tried to take hold of it; and at once those men who stretched out their hands to the bier had them as though glued to the bier, so that they could not draw them away, till released by the grace of God and the prayer of the apostles. S. Mary died on Zion, which is in the midst of Jerusalem. And then the eleven apostles carried her, as I have said; and then angels came and took her out of the hands of the apostles and carried her into Paradise-** AH this is from the apocryphal “Transitus Sanctse Marie,** condemned by Pope Gdasuis tJ«l fb the pilgrims saw the house in which Christ was bom converted into a magnificent cruciform church. Thence they went to Jehoah, where was pointed out to them the scene of the slaughter of the innocents. Willibald next visited the great monastery of S. Sabas, which was a laura, that is, was composed of separate cells, excavated in the rocks, in which the monks lived by themselves. Not far from S. Sabas was the church which he was told stood over the spot where S. Philip baptized the eunuch. He next visited Gaza, and a church dedicated to S. Matthias, where he heard mass, and was suddenly afflicted there with blindness, brought on, maybe, by the glare of the sun and the light sand of the desert. He suffered from this affliction of his eyes for two months. Thence he visited Hebron and the tombs of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and came to Jerusalem again, where the inflammation of his eyes abated, and he recovered the use of his sight. After a lengthy stay in Jerusalem, about which singularly enough Willibald has not much to say, he proceeded to Diospolis, where was the tomb of S. George the Martyr, and to Lydda, where he saw the place of the miracle of the raising of Dorcas. Thence, along the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, Willibald journeyed to Damascus over Mount Lebanon, and returned to Jerusalem, where he spent the winter of 723-4. In the following spring the travellers went to Ptolemais, where Willibald fell sick, and was unable to proceed till the end of Lent [the forty days of fasting before Easter]. His companions, however, were sent to the Khalif for letters of protection; but not finding him, they returned to Ptolemais, where they all remained till the week before Easter, when they journeyed to Emessa, to ask for letters of safe conduct from the governor of that place. These they obtained, but they July TO were obliged to travel in separate parties of two each, on account of the difficulty of procuring food.
They went from Emessa to Damascus, and thence a fourth time to Jerusalem, where they remained some time, and afterwards visited Samaria, where were buried John the Baptist, Abdias, and Elisha the Prophet. They saw the well where our Saviour spoke with the Samaritan woman, and after passing a night there, traversed an extensive plain covered with olive trees, in company with a negro who had two camels and a mule, and who was conducting a lady through the forest. On their way a lion roared at them, but did them no injury.
Having skirted Mount Carmel, they proceeded to Tyre, where they were obliged to remain a long time before they found a ship bound for Constantinople. It is in the highest degree probable that the difficulties experienced by Willibald and his companions in getting a passport, and the troubles they met with in their departure from Syria, were coincident with the persecution of the Christian Church in that country in 724, when the Khalif Yezid II., at the end of his reign, had been instigated by the Jews to publish an edict against the paintings in the churches of his Christian subjects, and in consequence of which many had fled their homes. After the death of Yezid, hostilities broke out between the Greeks and Arabs, and continued during many years, so that Willibald's departure from the Holy Land cannot be placed later than this date. The whole tenour of the narrative shows that the pilgrims quitted Syria on account of some sudden change in the internal state of the country, and that they were anxious to get away, for they came to Tyre at the wrong season of the vol. vil 1 2 year for making the voyage to Constantinople, and sailed in rough and dangerous weather. Willibald sailed from Tyre on S. Andrew’s Day (Nov. 30th, 724), and succeeded in smuggling out of the country some balsam. Had he been caught he would have been punished. He did it in this way. He filled a calabash with balsam, and then made a little cane tube, stopped at one end, which he filled with naphtha, and inserted in the hole of the calabash. The officers of customs overhauled all Willibald’s effects, and uncorked his gourd-bottle. They smelt the naphtha and corked it up and returned it to him.
The vessel reached Constantinople in Holy Week, and Willibald remained there two years, lodging in a chamber of the great church, where he could see the tomb of S. John Chrysostom, which lay under the feet of the celebrating priest, and the altar which contained the bones of S. Andrew, S. Timothy, and S. Luke the Evangelist. We should have been glad of some account of that magnificent city, but Willibald vouchsafes us none. He made an excursion to Nicaea, to see the place where met the great council, and examined the portraits of the three hundred and eighteen who there assembled. The church of Nicaea, he tells us, was a filial of the church on the Mount of the Ascension outside Jerusalem. After two years, Willibald sailed with the nuncios of Pope Gregory II., who had visited Constantinople, with letters from the Pope to Germanus the Patriarch. The year before, 726, was that in which the Emperor Leo the Isaurian hurled his edict against images, and thus opened the deadly persecution against those who reverenced, and more than reverenced, sacred images, which raged for one hundred and sixteen years. Of the breaking out of the strife Willibald says no single July 70 S. Willibald.
word, either because the persecution had not as yet become active, or because his sympathies were not wholly with the venerators of the images. 1 Willibald sailed in the spring of 727, and landed in Sicily, at Syracuse. He re-visited Catania, from thence crossed over to Reggio in Calabria, and proceeded to visit the isle of Vulcano, which he endeavoured to ascend, but was prevented by the white burning ash. This volcano, he tells us, is the Hell of Theodoric. He alludes to the story told by S. Gregory the Great in his Dialogues. A hermit, who resided on the isle of Lipari, told a friend of S. Gregory that he had seen the soul of the Gothic King Theodoric thrown into the crater of Vulcano.
Thence Willibald travelled to Naples and Capua, and finally settled at Monte Casino, where he arrived in the autumn, after having been absent from Italy seven years, and ten years from the date of his departure from England.
Willibald acted during the first year of his stay at Monte Casino as chamberlain (cubicularius). The second year he filled the office of dean, and during the eight following years he acted as porter.
After having been ten years an inmate of this famous monastic establishment, he accompanied a Spanish priest to Rome, where he arrived on Nov. 30th, in the year 733. Willibald was received with marks of distinction by Pope Gregory HI., who listened with interest to the relation of his adventurous travels, and then informed him that his kinsman, Boniface, who probably thought that no man could be better fitted to 1 I think this possible, as the council or Frankfort, convened under Charlemagne [king of the Franks, crowned emperor in 800] in 794, rejected all adoration of images, and this council no doubt represented Ihe general feeling of the northern bishops on the sutyect. CJuly 7.
contend with the difficulties of his situation than one who had continued during five years to brave the perils of travel in a country subject to the domination of a hostile and unbelieving people, had sent for him to be his assistant in the conversion of the Germans. Willibald quitted Rome at Easter (739), passed through Lucca, where he visited the tomb of his father, Ticino, Brescia; passed through Carinthia, and having spent a week with Duke Odilo, then went on to Count Suitgar of Hirsberg, who accompanied him to Linthrat, where he met S. Boniface [English missionary to Germany, martyred 754].
Suitgar, anxious that the Gospel should be spread through the land which he governed, gave to S. Willibald the place now called Eichstadt, on the borders of Franconia, watered by the Altmuhl. From that time to the beginning of this century, this little principality, measuring some twenty miles long, belonged to the bishop of Eichstadt. S. Boniface accompanied Willibald to the scene of his future labours, and ordained him priest in the little church of S. Mary, which was the only building in the midst of the wilderness of rock and forest that covered the lime-stone plateau and the valley of the Altmuhl, and which stood where now cluster the spires of the cathedral city.
S. Willibald probably planted his residence on the spur of rock called after him, round which the river winds, now crowned by the vast castle-palace of the bishops of Eichstadt, converted into a barrack in modern times, and now filing into ruin.
He was ordained on July 22nd, a.d. 739; and in the autumn of the year following, S. Boniface sent him into Thuringia, where he met his brother Wunibald, whom he had not seen since he quitted him at Rome on his way to the East. Shortly after his visit to Thuringia, S. Willibald.
Willibald was consecrated bishop of Eichstadt, on October 21st, by Boniface, Burkhardt, and Wizo. He was then aged forty-one. He at once founded a monastery, and sent his disciples throughout the land preaching the Gospel and founding churches. He was joined by his sister S. Walburga, for whom he built a convent on the slope of the lime-stone hill above the river, and there she died, and reposes. The date of the death of S. Willibald is uncertain. He was present at the German council in 742, and at that of Leptines in 743. In 777 he translated the body of his brother Wunibald, and he was subsequently present at the burial of his sister Walburga. His name occurs so late as Oct. 8th, 785, and it is supposed that he died the year following, at the great age of eighty-six. His body reposes in the cathedral of Eichstadt.
