St. Henry

St. Henry was born in 973 in Bavaria, son of Duke Henry II 'the Quarrelsome,' and was educated in his youth under St. Wolfgang, the saintly bishop of Regensburg, a formation that marked him for life. He succeeded his father as duke of Bavaria in 995, was elected king of Germany in 1002, and in 1014 was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome by Pope Benedict VIII, the last ruler of the Ottonian line. Henry governed as a Christian sovereign in the fullest sense. He waged war when duty required, in Poland, Burgundy, and Italy, but his deepest energies went to the strengthening of the Church: he restored plundered dioceses, endowed monasteries, and vigorously supported the monastic reform radiating from Cluny and Gorze. His crowning work was the foundation of the diocese of Bamberg in 1007, with its magnificent cathedral, intended as a center for the evangelization of the Slavic peoples on his eastern frontier. He was married to St. Cunegund of Luxembourg, who was crowned empress beside him; the marriage was childless, and a later tradition, cherished though not historically certain, holds that the two lived in virginal continence. Hagiographical accounts also relate that Henry once asked to be admitted as a monk at the abbey of Saint-Vanne in Verdun, whereupon the abbot, receiving his vow of obedience, commanded him to continue ruling the empire, a story that captures how his contemporaries understood his reign: kingship lived as a vocation of service. Henry died on July 13, 1024, at Grone near Göttingen, and was buried in Bamberg Cathedral, where his tomb, a masterpiece carved by Tilman Riemenschneider, is shared with St. Cunegund and remains a place of pilgrimage. He was canonized in 1146 by Pope Eugene III, the only Holy Roman Emperor raised to the altars. His feast is kept on July 13, and he is honored as a patron of the childless and, by designation of Pope St. Pius X, of Benedictine oblates, a fitting patronage for a ruler who lived in the world with the heart of a monk.