ERMANNO GIUSEPPE di STEINFELD, blessed. – Premonstratensian mystic, born in Cologne after 1150, died in the monastery of the Cistercian nuns at Hoven on 4 April, probably in 1241. At the age of twelve he entered the abbey of the Premonstratensian Canons Regular at Steinfeld in the Eifel, but completed his studies at the canonry of Mariengaarden in Frisia. Having returned to Steinfeld, he served there as sacristan and exercised his ministry in various convents of women. He also distinguished himself as a clockmaker. The translation of his remains from Hoven to Steinfeld, a few weeks after his death, marked the beginning of an ever-growing veneration. His tomb is situated in the central nave of the church of Steinfeld; the cult rendered to the Blessed has not yet received solemn recognition from the Holy See.
His life was written by one of his contemporaries; reliable in its biographical information, it is far less so in the mystical events related therein. E. nevertheless lived an outstanding mystical life and was the representative of a tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin, whose culmination was supposedly his mystical marriage to Mary Most Holy, whence his second name, Giuseppe. Affable and cheerful, he was an austere penitent. Eminent for humility, chastity, and charity. In addition to prayers and a musical office of St. Ursula, he wrote a commentary on the Canticum canticorum (lost); his literary authorship of the oldest hymn to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Summi regii cor aurea) is disputed. E. is especially venerated in the Rhineland and among the Premonstratensians; patron of youth, he is invoked by pregnant women. The oldest representations of E. depict him holding a chalice from which three roses emerge, symbolizing his devotion to Mary Most Holy. From the seventeenth century he is represented holding the Child Jesus in his arms: his mystical marriage to Mary appears in a painting by Antonio Van Dyck (1630, State Museum, Vienna); in works by Giuseppe von Führich (1810–76) and Edoardo von Steinle (1810–86), E. is depicted in the guise of a schoolboy offering an apple to the Madonna. Feast on 7 April.