BENNO, bishop of MEISSEN, saint. — Of a Saxon comital family, brother of Count Cristoforo, he was a canon at Goslar when, in 1066, he was appointed bishop of Meissen by Enrico IV. Unusually among German prelates, he practiced evangelical poverty. In the struggle that broke out between the emperor and the Saxons, he sided with his fellow countrymen; this exposed him, after peace had been made, to Enrico’s reprisals. The firm stance of the Church, by then moving toward external decisions in order to combat lay interference, compelled Enrico, immediately after the excommunication, to recall the exiled bishops, among them B.
The bishop’s attitude, in turn, was decisive: in 1078, at the diet of Forchheim, he was among the seven Saxon bishops who, against Enrico, elected Rodolfo of Swabia, and, upon the latter’s death, Ermanno di Salm. In the following years he was among the most fervent champions of the papal party and of the reforming Church. The assembly of Mainz in May 1085 deposed and exiled him from his see, together with the other opponents of Enrico’s policy. But then a conciliatory tendency prevailed in B.’s mind: this tendency, the crisis of the Church following the death of Gregorio VII, and perhaps the desire to return to his Meissen, which had meanwhile been occupied by the imperial bishop Felice, induced him to go to Italy and submit to the antipope Guiberto, who had him restored to the emperor’s favor. Restored to his see, he worked, including intellectually, toward reconciling the two positions in the treatise De unitate Ecclesiae conservanda. In 1097, however, he recognized Urbano II as the true Pontiff. 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 reconstruction of Meissen Cathedral. Toward the end of the fifteenth century the local clergy became advocates of his canonization; and on 31 May 1523 Adriano VI solemnly canonized him and set his feast on the presumed date of his death, 16 June (1106). The following year, on the occasion of a new translation, Martin Lutero, considering that the new Saint had not during his lifetime demonstrated heroism in the faith, and that the Saxon milieu and the interests of the Meissen clergy had influenced the process, did not miss the opportunity to attack in a pamphlet this form of the Church’s much-deplored worldliness (Widder den neuen Abgott und alttet Teuffel, der zu Meissen sol erhoben werden [in M. Luthers Werke, XV, Weimar 1899], pp. 170–98). Gerolamo Emser, who had published a Vita of B. from 1512 onward (which remains the fullest source for knowledge of the bishop, despite its legendary character), replied to Lutero with an Antwort auff das lesterliche Buch (sic der Bischof Benno zu Meissen, published in Dresden in that same year, 1524). Other Protestants and Catholics echoed the controversy. This controversy also reverberated in the history of the bishop’s remains: the introduction of the Reformation into the Duchy of Saxony led to the destruction of the Saint’s altar and tomb, but Giovanni VIII, bishop of Meissen, succeeded in carrying the relics to his castle at Stolp. They remained there only briefly: transported to Wurzen and then to Monaco, they finally found peace, after 1580, in the Cathedral. B. is still venerated by the Catholics of Meissen and of all Bavaria as their patron saint.
BBL.: For a fuller account of the sources, cf. Acta SS. Iunii, III, Antwerp 1701, pp. 146–231; Pothast, II, Leipzig 1896, p. 1204; O. Langer, Kritik der Quellen zur Gesch. des hl. Benno, in Mitt. d. Vereins für Gesch. der Stadt Meissen, I, 3 (1884, fasc. III), pp. 70–95; R. Döbner, Ahtenstücke zur Gesch. der Vita Bennonis Mismensis, in N. Archiv für sächsische Gesch., 7 (1886), pp. 131–44. — On Benno: E. Machatschek, Geschichte der Bischöfe des Hochstiftes Meissen, Dresden 1884, pp. 65–94; O. Langer, Bischof Benno von Meissen, in Mitt. d. Vereins für Gesch. d. Stadt Meissen, I (1886, v), pp. 1–38; II (1888, II), pp. 99–144; K. P. Will, Sankt Benno, Bischof V. Meissen, Dresden 1887; E. Klein, Der heilige Benno, Bischof von Meissen, Monaco 1904; J. P. Kirsch, Beiträge z. Gesch. d. hl. Benno, there 1904; A. Hauck, Kirchengesch. Deutschlands, III, Leipzig 1906, pp. 841–50. — Benno’s treatise, De unitate Ecclesiae conservanda, is published in the collection Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum, in MGH, II, Hannover 1893, p. 244 ff. Pier Fausto Palumbo