St. Ulric of Augsburg

Ulric is among the most practical and concrete of bishops, the kind of saint whose holiness shows itself in a full day honestly spent. Born at Augsburg in 890 and educated at St. Gall, he seems from early on marked for the episcopate, though his health appears too delicate for long endurance. The contrast is striking: regularity and temperance strengthen what self-indulgence might have ruined. When Ulric is eventually raised to the see of Augsburg, the region has been badly shaken by Magyar raids. Churches are burned, the cathedral has suffered, and the people need comfort no less than rebuilding. Ulric begins with what can actually be done. He puts up a small church for immediate use, regathers the people, and gives himself to the plain spiritual work of a bishop.

His daily routine is unusually vivid in the sources. Ulric rises about three for prayer, remains through the offices, and then goes out to the hospital, comforts the sick, washes the feet of the poor, gives alms, preaches, teaches, visits, and makes the yearly visitation of his whole diocese. The sanctity here is not flashy but tireless. In old age he longs to resign and retire to St. Gall, and he even tries to place his nephew after him, a move judged uncanonical and needing correction at a synod. That weakness is part of the record too. The life ends memorably: the old bishop laid on ashes in the form of a cross, dying in 973 amid the prayers of his clergy. His cult grows quickly, and his canonization by John XV in 993 holds a firm place in Church history as the first solemn papal canonization on record.