BENNO, Bishop of Meissen, Saint. - Of a Saxon comital family, brother of Count Christopher, he was a canon at Goslar when he was appointed by Henry IV, in 1066, bishop of Meissen. He practiced, unusually among the German prelates, evangelical poverty. In the struggle that broke out between the emperor and the Saxons, he took the side of his fellow countrymen: which exposed him, after peace was made, to Henry's reprisals. The firm attitude of the Church, by then set on external decisions to combat lay interference, obliged Henry, on the morrow of the excommunication, to recall the exiled bishops and among them B.
The bishop's attitude was, in turn, decided: in 1078, at the diet of Forchheim, he was among the seven Saxon bishops who elected, against Henry, Rudolf of Swabia, and upon the latter's death, Hermann of Salm. In the following years he was among the most fervent champions of the pontifical party and of the reforming Church. The assembly of Mainz of May 1085 struck him, together with the other opponents of Henry's policy, deposing him and exiling him from his see. But then the conciliatory tendency prevailed in B.'s mind: this tendency and the crisis of the Church at the death of Gregory VII, and perhaps the desire to return to his Meissen, meanwhile occupied by the imperial bishop Felix, bent him to come to Italy and to submit to the antipope Guibert, who had him received back into the emperor's favor. Restored to his see, he devoted his efforts, of thought as well, to the reconciliation of the two theses with the treatise De unitate Ecclesiae conservanda. In 1097, however, he recognized Urban II as true Pontiff. But from then on the sources are silent about him: one can only suppose that he died some years later, between 1105 and 1107.
The cult of B. arose late, on the occasion of the rebuilding of the cathedral of Meissen. Toward the end of the fifteenth century the local clergy became the promoter of his canonization: and on 31 May 1523 Adrian VI solemnly canonized him and fixed his feast on the supposed date of his death, 16 June (1106). The following year, on the occasion of a new translation, Martin Luther, judging that the new Saint had not given in life proof of heroism in the faith and that the Saxon milieu and the interest of the clergy of Meissen had influenced the process, did not let slip the occasion to inveigh in a pamphlet against this form of the much deplored worldliness of the Church (Widder den neuen Abgott und alten Teuffel, der zu Meissen sol erhoben werden [in M. Luthers Werke, XV, Weimar 1899], pp. 170-98). Jerome Emser, who had published a Vita of B. since 1512 (which remains the fullest source for knowledge of the bishop, despite its legendary character), replied to Luther with an Antwort auff das lesterliche Buch (sic) Bischof Benno zu Meissen, published at Dresden in the same 1524. Other Protestants and Catholics echoed the polemic. Which also had repercussions on the story of the bishop's remains: the introduction of the Reformation in the duchy of Saxony brought about the destruction of the Saint's altar and tomb, but the bishop John VIII of Meissen succeeded in carrying the relics to his castle of Stolp. There they were kept but a short time: transported to Wurzen, then to Munich, they at last found peace, after 1580, in the Cathedral. B. is still venerated by the Catholics of Meissen and of the whole of Bavaria as their patron saint.
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Pier Fausto Palumbo