Catholic Heroes… St. Arnulf, Bishop Of Soissons
By DEB PIROCH
“For man’s sweat and God’s love, beer came into the world” — St. Arnold, bishop of Metz.
A forgotten feast near the time of the Assumption is another saint of long ago, St. Arnulf, patron saint of brewers and hop pickers. This Belgian saint is still fondly remembered in his native country and elsewhere for his services to mankind and to beer, respectively, as we shall hear below.
During the eleventh century our saint, the son of Fulbert, was born in Brabant, Belgium. A career soldier who served with distinction under two French kings, he afterward chose to retire to live a life of prayer and asceticism as a hermit. After approximately three years, a group of clergy and laity, impressed with his holiness, asked him to be the abbot of the nearby Benedictine St-Medard Abbey. His immediate response was negative, saying:
“Leave a sinner to offer to God some fruits of penance: Do not compel such a fool as myself to take up a charge which requires so much wisdom.”
Mythology states that he fled and a wolf compelled him to return. In any case, he did accept and become abbot.
St. Medard Abbey, founded in the sixth century, was in its time was one of the greatest in all of France. Besides St. Medard, the abbey contains tombs of kings and relics of numerous saints, including for one that of St. Gregory the Great. (In the See of Soissons, there were at least seven abbeys alone, countless churches and saints during its history.)
Arnulf indeed became a priest and abbot, and dedicated himself with great assiduity until another man came and usurped his duties. Not wanting a fight, he asked permission to resign. Soissons lies in the northern part of France, but he journeyed to Flanders, founding the Abbey of St. Peter in Aldenburg (also seen spelled other ways, such as “Oudenberg”). Our saint threw himself into the day-to-day monastery life, particularly that of brewing beer.
The brewing of beer is ancient but, in the Middle Ages, we have the monks to thank for not only taking over the brewing, but also for their great innovations in its preparation. Beer also has a great deal to do with the miracles and legends of St. Arnulf perpetuated today.
Water quality being what it was at the time, beer was safer, in that it was boiled during the process. Though that was naturally unknown at the time, that process would have killed off pathogens in the water. Cholera is just such an example. During a famed epidemic, St. Arnulf urged the people to drink the beer of the monastery, saving the local people from an outbreak that harmed surrounding areas. This likely happened on at least more than one occasion.
Additionally, at one juncture barrels of beer had been destroyed at the monastery due to a roof collapse. St. Arnulf prayed that the beer would be multiplied, and legend says that God answered his prayers and the stash was multiplied for the needs of the monks.
Beer really was a healthful drink at the time. A mug contained twice the calories of a slice of bread. One source reports beer is a source of fiber, magnesium, B vitamins, and other valuable enrichment. This mattered particularly because the beer the monks drank as a “small breakfast” was low in alcohol and spent yeast. It filled them up and kept them going as they went about their day both praying and producing all they needed for sustenance.
During Lent, some monks brewed particularly enriching beer to drink, planning to eat nothing during the entire of Lent. “Bock beer” was just such an enriching beer, and there was also “Doppelbock,” a doubly enriching beer that was supposed to fill one up more and nourish in the absence of food. However, we do not endorse this as a method of fasting during Lent!
Monks brewed as early as the fifth century, but St. Arnulf is also credited with innovation in the brewing process. He apparently somehow used “bee straws” from hives to filter the beer (or baskets, depending on what one reads). He is thus often portrayed in paintings as a soldier in armor, but with a bishop’s mitre, and holding a mashing rake for raking hops or even with a beehive.
Monks like St. Arnulf kept recipes that were meant to constantly improve the process of beer making. If you like beer cold, the monks were the ones who invented that lagering process, as well as filtering the beer, to regulate the amount of alcohol, and they added hops for preservation. St. Arnulf is often shown to this day on labels of beer bottles and cans in Europe and elsewhere, because he saved the lives of those around the abbey, by having them drink abbey beer.
He died at the young age of 47, but that was approximately the average lifespan at the time. We know little more of this saint, but after his passing a biography of his was shown by the succeeding bishop, and some small source mentions are made in Butler’s Lives, not easily accessible to this poor biographer. Particularly outstanding is that just 35 years after his death, his miracles were already being examined and approved at the Council of Beauvais in 1121. His body was moved to St. Peter’s in Flanders where he had lived, and canonized quite quickly. All of this is testimony to his saintliness and the miracles that were examined at the time, but also God’s will for Holy Mother Church.
Sad to say, both the abbeys, St. Medard’s from the fifth century and St. Peter’s from the twelfth, were destroyed at the time of the French Revolution.
St. Arnulf’s feast day is August 14.
Some mistakenly will mix up the saint above with another, that is, St. Arnold of Metz (582-645). Married with sons, he was involved with the court of King Theobert II of Austrasia.
While obviously no more in existence, Austrasia would have comprised part of France, part of Germany and part of the Low Countries. Not wishing to be entangled in the demands of statesmanship, he asked to be allowed to retire away from court to live a life of prayer. (His wife had left earlier to enter a religious order herself.) Instead, they made him the bishop of Metz! This bishop is all the more remarkable in that he was the great-great grandfather of Emperor Charlemagne.
We would require more space for accounts of his holiness than exists here. However, legend does state that they finally did allow him to retire from advising the king. At the time, a fire broke out at court; Arnold gave his will to God, saying he was willing to die by fire if God willed it. He then blessed the fire, which promptly receded.
Another legend relates his remains were being moved in 641 and this was hard, difficult work. Those doing so prayed to the saint, asking that he might intercede to provide what they lacked. The mug of beer they were drinking remained full, no matter how much they drank, and never emptied. Now you see just why St. Arnulf and Arnold, centuries apart, get confused with each other — both “multiplied the beer” instead of loaves and fishes!
These are good thoughts for Octoberfest, just passed: Lenten monks fasting from food and healthy beer, instead of gorging on alcohol. As the Germans would say today, “Leb wohl!” (Live well.)
