St Ulric of Augsburg

Ulric is one of the most practical and concrete 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. This life likes the contrast: 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.

This life’s description of his routine is unusually vivid. 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. This life does not hide that weakness either. 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 this life notes the historical importance that his canonization by John XV in 993 is the first solemn papal canonization on record.