Arnulf of Toul

Holy Hierarch Arnulf of Toul was the twenty-⁠eighth bishop of Toul and reposed on 17 November 871. He was the son of Arnald, count palatine of King Louis the Pious, and of Flaminiola, residents of Orléans. He entered the clergy of Toul under Frothar, who knew Arnald well, as the latter had often come to the Toul region as missus dominicus.

The clergy and people of Toul chose him as successor to Frothar, who died in 847 or 848, and the Emperor Lothar I, who esteemed him, ratified the choice. A few years later the same emperor took from the diocese the abbeys of Saint-⁠Èvre, Saint-⁠Martin and Saint-⁠Germain and gave them to lay abbots. Arnulf would not accept the situation and went to the abbey of Prüm, where the emperor had retired after his abdication, to ask for the abbeys back; Lothar agreed to recommend to his sons that they return them, which happened only three years later.

Dependent on the kingdom of Lothar II, he took part in several church assemblies at Aachen, among them that of 860, at which the prelates of the kingdom accepted the repudiation of Empress Theutberga. She managed to escape and appealed to Pope Nicholas I, who annulled the decisions of the council and laid an anathema on those who took part. Arnulf had to acknowledge his fault and obtain the pope's pardon, and Lothar II confiscated part of the goods of the diocese, among them the three abbeys, in reprisal. In 869, at the death of Lothar II, his uncle Charles the Bald took Lotharingia, and Arnulf was present at his coronation at Metz. He died in 871; his successor was his nephew Arnald. He is honored as a saint of the undivided Church.