Lives Of The Saints
December 18
St. Winebald
Quick answer
At a glance
- What it is
- Winebald was a saint of quiet missionary endurance. He was not a conqueror or a spectacular wonder-worker.
- Feast
- December 18
- Source
- Butler's Lives of the Saints, Volume IV (October-November-December), December 18, St Winebald, Christian Classics 1990, pp. 582-583. Read the source standards.
Devotional card
St. Winebald
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Brief life
Winebald was one of the English missionary saints of Germany, frail in body but steady in spirit. After years of prayer and study at Rome he was drawn by St. Boniface into the work of planting the Church in Thuringia and Bavaria, where he preached, organized, and endured the roughness of mission life. Later, with his brother St. Willibald and their sister St. Walburga, he founded the double monastery at Heidenheim, which became a durable center of Benedictine life, learning, and evangelization.
Long sickness narrowed his strength but did not break his usefulness. He kept teaching, forming monks, and holding up the life of Christ as the fixed pattern until his death in 761.
Historical note
This life uses St. Winebald because Butler gives him a fuller and more substantial missionary life than the shorter notices also found on the date.
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