Benno of Meissen

Saint Benno of Meissen
Painting by Johann Michael Rottmayr, 1702 Alte Pinakothek, Munich
Confessor and Bishop of Meissen
Born	c. 1010 Hildesheim, Duchy of Saxony
Died	(1106-06-16)16 June 1106 Meissen, Margraviate of Meissen
Venerated in	Catholic Church
Canonized	31 May 1523 by Pope Adrian VI
Major shrine	Munich, formerly Meissen
Feast	16 June
Attributes	book, fish with keys in its mouth
Patronage	fishermen, weavers, Dresden-Meissen, Munich

Benno (c. 1010 – 16 June 1106) was named Bishop of Meissen in 1066. Venerated since the 13th century, he was canonized in 1523. Benno did much for his diocese, both by ecclesiastical reforms on the Hildebrandine model and by material developments. He was venerated in his native Saxony throughout the Late Middle Ages.

The first Vita was composed in 1460 by one Spedel, a Benedictine monk of St. Michael's monastery in Hildesheim. The second, by Jerome Emser, was published in 1512 as part of the efforts to have Benno canonized.^[1] In the last years of the fifteenth century and the first decades of the sixteenth century the canons of Meissen and George, Duke of Albertine Saxony, coordinated a campaign to achieve Benno's canonization. The canons sought the prestige of a canonized local bishop, and the duke sought a suitable model bishop for the reform of the church.^[2]

Little is known of Benno's early life. Born in Hildesheim, it is reported that he was the scion of a Saxon noble family, such as the Woldenburgs;^[3] and may have been educated at the monastery of St. Michael in Hildesheim.^[4] However it is certain that Benno was a canon of the Goslar chapter.^[5] In 1066 he was nominated by King Henry IV to the episcopal see of Meissen.^[4]

Benno appears as a supporter of the Saxon rebellion in 1073,^[5] though the chronicler Lambert of Hersfeld and other contemporary authorities attribute little weight to his share in it.^[6] Henry IV exiled Benno in 1075, but allowed him to return to his see the following year.^[1]

During the fierce Investiture Controversy, Benno supported Pope Gregory, and allegedly took part in the election of antiking Rudolf of Rheinfelden in 1077.^[5] After Rudolf's death he turned to the new antiking Hermann of Salm and was accordingly excommunicated and deprived of his bishopric by the 1085 Synod of Mainz. Benno betook himself to Archbishop Guibert of Ravenna, supported by Henry as Antipope Clement III, and by a penitent acknowledgment of his offences obtained from him both absolution and a letter of commendation to Henry, on the basis of which he was restored to his see.^[5]

Benno promised, apparently, to use his influence for peace with the Saxons, but again failed to keep his promise, returning in 1097 to the papal party and recognizing Urban II as the rightful pope. With this he disappears from authentic history;^[4] there is no evidence to support the later stories of his missionary activity and zeal for church-building and for ecclesiastical music.^[5] Benno died of natural causes on June 16, 1106.^[7]

Benno did much for his diocese, both by ecclesiastical reforms on the Hildebrandine model and by material developments.^[8] Benno enjoyed veneration in his native Saxony throughout the later Middle Ages.^[4] Adrian VI issued the bull of canonization in 1523.^[9][10] Although Benno's sainthood had little to do with Luther's call for reform, once canonized he became a symbol for both sides of the reforming debate: Luther reviled him in early tracts against the cult of the saints.^[11] Catholic reformers turned him into a model of orthodoxy; and after Protestant mobs desecrated Benno's tomb in Meissen in 1539,^[12] the Wittelsbach dynasty ultimately made him patron saint of Munich and Old Bavaria.^[4]

For his part, the English Protestant John Foxe eagerly repeated the charges which Benno, who opposed Gregory VII,^[13] made against Henry IV during the Investiture Controversy,^[14] such as necromancy, torture of a former friend upon a bed of nails, commissioning an attempted assassination, executions without trials, unjust excommunication, doubting the Real Presence in the Eucharist, and even burning it.^[15]

Benno's feast day is 16 June. He is the patron-saint of anglers and weavers. His iconographic figures include a fish with keys in its mouth and a book. The reason for the fish is a legend that upon the excommunication of Henry IV the bishop told his canons to throw the keys to the cathedral into the Elbe; later a fisherman found the keys in a fish and brought them to the bishop.^[4][16]

• Catholic Church in Germany
• List of Catholic saints
• Saint Benno, patron saint archive

• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Benno" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 743.
• Foxe, John; Townsend, George (1837). The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe: With a Preliminary Dissertation by the Rev. George Townsend. R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside, sold by L. & G. Seeley. p. 121.
• Kirsch, Johann Peter (1907). "St. Benno" . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Thurston, Herbert; Attwater, Donald, eds. (1963). Butler's Lives of the Saints. Vol. II. New York: P. J. Kennedy. p. 556.

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication in the public domain: Haugic, A. (1908). "Benno". In Jackson, Samuel Macauley (ed.). New Schaff–Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Vol. 2 (third ed.). London and New York: Funk and Wagnalls. p. 54.

• Collins, David J. (2001). "Bursfelders, Humanists, and the Rhetoric of Sainthood: The Late Medieval vitae of Saint Benno". Revue Bénédictine. 111 (3–4): 508–556. doi:10.1484/J.RB.5.100714.
• Collins, David J. (2008). Reforming Saints: Saints' Lives and Their Authors in Germany, 1470-1530. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 3–6, 28–39, 45–46. ISBN 978-0-19-532953-7.
• Soergel, Philip M. (1993). Wondrous in his Saints. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 181–191.
• Volkmar, Christoph (2002). Die Heiligenerhebung Bennos von Meißen (1523/24). Spätmittelalterliche Frömmigkeit, landesherrliche Kirchenpolitik und reformatorische Kritik im albertinischen Sachsen in der frühen Reformationszeit (Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte; 146) (in German). Münster.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Benno.

• Saint Benno at the Christian Iconography web site.
• Christoph Volkmar: Benno. In: Institut für Sächsische Geschichte und Volkskunde (Hrsg.): Sächsische Biografie.
• "Benno of Meissen" in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints
• Bishop Benno on the home page of the Archdioces of Munich and Freising
• Bishop Benno on the home page of the Catholic Church of Meissen
• Bishop Benno on the home page of the Bishopric of Dresden-Meissen Archived 2015-09-23 at the Wayback Machine