Saint Altmann of Passau

The 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia heads its article "Blessed Altmann." ¹ The current Roman Martyrology, as the Italian bishops print it, calls him "sant'Altmanno," and Göttweig Abbey calls him "St. Altmann." ²⁴ Göttweig says that he is venerated as a saint although he was never canonized, and the Archdiocese of Vienna says the same. ⁴⁵

Göttweig also calls him the only bishop of the old diocese of Passau to be venerated as a saint, a diocese that once took in the present dioceses of Passau, Linz, St. Pölten and Vienna. ⁴ The Vita Altmanni, the life a Göttweig monk wrote of him, survives from the twelfth century; the Archdiocese of Vienna dates it to 1135. ⁴⁵

The encyclopedia says he was born at Paderborn about the beginning of the eleventh century. ¹ Antonio Borrelli, on santiebeati.it, puts his birth in Westphalia about 1015, to parents of high standing, and Göttweig says he was born there about 1010 or 1020, of an important family of counts. ³⁴ He studied at the cathedral school of Paderborn and became a canon and master there; the encyclopedia says he "presided over the school." ¹³

About 1051 he became a chaplain at the court of the Emperor Henry III, at Aachen, which brought him close to the imperial family. ¹³ Borrelli says that both at Paderborn and at court he took in the ideas of the Benedictine reform of Cluny, which the Empress Agnes favored. ³ After Henry's early death in 1056 Altmann stayed on as chaplain and adviser to Agnes. ³

In 1063 he went with her to Passau and there joined a great pilgrimage leaving for the Holy Land. ³ On the way back, in Hungary, he heard that Bishop Engelbert of Passau had died and that, with the empress's support, he had been chosen to succeed him. ³ Göttweig says Agnes appointed him in 1065. ⁴

The diocese then reached into Upper and Lower Austria, and Borrelli says its moral and religious state was poor, as the Vita Altmanni describes it. ³ His chief concern was the clergy, many of whom were living with women and badly taught. ³ He promoted the common life of clerics around their bishop, without private property, which grew into the canons regular under the Rule of Saint Augustine in southern Germany and Austria. ²³

Before 1073 he founded the canons of St. Nikola outside Passau. ³ Göttweig says he reformed the old houses of St. Florian, Kremsmünster and St. Pölten, helped to found the canons of Rottenbuch, and had a part in turning the canons of Melk into a Benedictine abbey. ³⁴ The encyclopedia remembers him for his care of the poor and for the splendor he gave to divine worship, with the Emperor Henry IV himself giving generously to the church of Passau through the empresses Agnes and Bertha. ¹

In 1074, Borrelli says, he was one of the few German bishops to publish Gregory VII's decrees against simony and the marriage of clerics, at the risk of being killed by those they angered. ³ The encyclopedia says his enforcement of the decree on celibacy stirred up opposition, and that with Henry's help the clergy who resisted succeeded in driving him from his see. ¹

In the investiture conflict between Gregory VII and Henry IV, the encyclopedia counts him among the four South German bishops who took Gregory's side and refused to attend the Diet of Worms that was to depose the pope. ¹ Borrelli says that of the bishops of the region only he and Archbishop Gebhard of Salzburg stood with the pope, and that Altmann published the pope's excommunication of Henry in his own cathedral. ³ Göttweig says Gregory and his successors held him in high esteem, and that he was papal legate for the empire for fifteen years, from 1076 until his death. ⁴

In 1078, Göttweig says, Henry drove him out of Passau for this and for supporting the rival king, Rudolf of Rheinfelden, and a counter-bishop was set up in his place. ⁴ The Martyrology says he died in exile, expelled for defending the freedom of the Church against the emperor. ²

The sources tell the end of the exile differently. Göttweig says he never returned to Passau, and could work only in the eastern part of his diocese, though as legate he traveled the whole empire. ⁴ Borrelli says that with the protection of Margrave Leopold of Austria he settled in the Austrian part of the diocese, without reaching Passau before his death. ³ The encyclopedia says he was recalled after the death of the intruder Hermann, at whose deathbed he is said to have appeared, held his see again for a short time, was expelled once more and died in exile ten years later. ¹

In 1072 Altmann consecrated a church of Saint Erentrude on the hill of Göttweig, and in 1083 he founded the abbey there as a double monastery, for men and women, under the Rule of Saint Augustine. ⁴⁵ On September 9, 1083, the feast of Saint Gorgonius, patron of the reforming abbey of Gorze, he consecrated its church to the Mother of God, and he dedicated the women's church below in the Fladnitz valley to Saint Blaise. ⁴ Göttweig adds that Margrave Leopold II had broken with Henry IV on his account and had been defeated at Mailberg in 1082. ⁴

In his last years, Borrelli says, he worked to relieve the suffering that the wars and persecutions brought on the people. ³ He died on August 8, 1091, in the Passau court at Zeiselmauer, near Tulln, and was buried at Göttweig. ³⁴ Göttweig says his grave soon drew the sick and pilgrims, the first of them from Tulln, and in 1094, three years after his death, the house took the Rule of Saint Benedict. ⁴ His relics now lie in a baroque shrine in the crypt of the abbey church. ⁴⁵

Introducing Fischer's biography in 2018, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn called him, in words translated here from the German, a "pilgrim, reformer and central confidant of the pope in the German empire." ⁵ The Archdiocese of Vienna quotes the twelfth-century monk who wrote his life as wanting to set "a light long hidden under a bushel before the coming centuries as a lamp," also translated here. ⁵

No source used here names Saint Altmann patron of anyone or anything. ¹²³⁴ He is remembered above all as the founder of Göttweig, where his relics are kept. ⁴

Saint Altmann of Passau's feast is August 8, the day he died. ²³⁴ The Roman Martyrology enters him that day at the monastery of Göttweig. ² Göttweig keeps a second day, June 16, the anniversary of the translation of his remains in 1362 by Duke Rudolf the Founder. ⁴

He came back from a pilgrimage to find himself a bishop, and set about the hardest part of the work first: the lives of his own clergy. ³ The reform cost him the goodwill of the men he governed and, in the end, his city. ¹⁴

He took the pope's side when most of his neighbors did not, and he paid for it with thirteen years away from his cathedral. ³⁴ Exile did not stop him. He traveled as legate, founded and reformed houses, and gave his last years to the people of a region worn down by war. ³⁴

He wanted clergy who lived together, owned nothing, and prayed in common. ³ The houses he founded and reformed carried that on after him, and Göttweig still keeps his grave. ⁴