Virgil, Abbot-Bishop of Sankt Peter of Salzburg, Saint

VIRGIL, Abbot-Bishop of Sankt Peter of Salzburg, Saint. - V. (thus Latinized), or Fergil (Feregii), of Irish origin, born ca. 700, died 27 November 784.

A monk, then abbot at Aghaboe, he acquired a broad culture that was also scientific, especially in mathematics and geography. Following in the footsteps of many monks (Scots), in 743 he went to the Frankish kingdom, to Pippin, and in 745 he passed into Bavaria, to Duke Odilo. The latter, on the death of the abbot-bishop of Salzburg, John, sent him there as abbot of the monastery of Sankt Peter and at the same time bishop of Salzburg. V., still a deacon, made use for episcopal functions of an itinerant bishop. Only in 755 (according to others in 767) did he receive consecration. His rule was among the most important of the early bishops of Salzburg. He had controversies with St. Boniface over liturgical and doctrinal questions, but managed to defend himself. Although he was abbot of St. Peter, he built a separate cathedral, a grandiose construction destroyed in the 16th century, consecrated on 24 September 744, and there he instituted a chapter (a prelude to the separation between St. Peter and the bishopric). For the deeper penetration of Christianity he founded, or favored the founding of, Benedictine monasteries, such as Mondsee (748), Mattsee (before 784), Innichen (now San Candido in Alto Adige, 769) and Kremsmünster (777), to which the mission toward the east was entrusted. More important was the assumption of the mission among the Slavs of Carantania (Carinthia), where he erected a chorepiscopate, preparing the grandiose missionary expansion of Salzburg (v.). V. is also the first author of the famous «Verbrüderungsbuch» of St. Peter, that is, of a catalogue of monasteries and churches spiritually affiliated, which remained in use until the 13th century, with more than 8000 names, one of the oldest and most renowned books of this kind (ed. by S. Herzberg-Frankel, in MGH, Micrologia, II, Berlin 1890-1904). He was buried in the cathedral of Salzburg. In 1233 Gregory IX canonized him. The relics now rest together with those of St. Rupert, beneath the high altar of the new cathedral, where they were transferred in 1628.

Giuseppe Löw