S. HRABANUS MAURUS (A.D. 776-856)

HRABANUS MAURUS, the most learned writer of the ninth century, was born at Mayence, and educated in the then celebrated monastery of Fulda. Ordained a deacon, he was sent to Tours, to study under the famous Alcuin, who gave him his surname of Maurus. Returning to Fulda, he taught there with considerable reputation; and reckoned among his disciples Odfrid, a monk of Wissenburg, near Spires, who was the first to translate the Holy Scriptures into the ver­nacular Tudesque. In process of time Hraban became Abbat of Fulda, which he raised to its highest pitch of re­putation, having one hundred and fifty monks under him, and enriching the library with one of the first collections of books then existing in Europe. During the twenty years that he held this office, he composed the greater part of those voluminous works, which have been published in six enormous folio volumes. At the end of that time he re­signed his dignity, and retired into a cell near the monastery, from whence he was forced, much against his will, by Louis le Debonnaire. That monarch obliged him, when nearly seventy, to accept the Archbishopric of Mayence. Here he distinguished himself by his maintenance of discipline and promotion of learning. One canon passed in his first council bears directly on our more immediate subject. It enacts that every Bishop shall possess a collection of homilies for the instruction of the people, and shall have them translated into Romance and into Tudesque; so that his flock, whichever might be their native language, should be able to comprehend them. Having filled the see with great reputation during eight years, and having especially distinguished himself by his charity in the terrible famine that devastated Germany in 850, he was called to his rest on the 4th of February, 856.

(Neale, p.29-30)