Frederick of Utrecht

Saint Frederick of Utrecht was bishop of Utrecht in Holland from 815 or 816, and he was slain in church in the year 838.

He was born around 780 in a noble family of Frisia; a sixteenth-⁠century folklore wrongly made him a grandson of the Frisian king Radboud. As a young man he was taught at Utrecht by the clergy, including Bishop Ricfried, was ordained priest and was put in charge of converting the remaining heathens in the northern areas of the diocese and outside it. He is known to have preached on Walcheren and, with Saint Odulf, at Stavoren and its surroundings. After Ricfried's death he was chosen bishop. He was known for his piety and learning, corresponded with Rabanus Maurus and was praised for his understanding at the synod of Aachen.

How he came to his end is uncertain. It is established only that he was murdered. Legend tells that two men stabbed him after the offering of the Liturgy on 18 July 838. According to Bishop Otbert of Liège (in the Passion of Frederick) and William of Malmesbury, the killers were hired by the Empress Judith, because he regularly criticized her dissolute life; later writers, among them Cesare Baronio and Jean Mabillon, say they were sent by the inhabitants of Walcheren, hostile to Christianity, in answer to his preaching, which seems the more plausible. There are no sources from his time showing that the empress was immoral. Shortly after his death he was regarded as a saint. He was buried in Saint Salvator's Church in Utrecht and is the patron of the deaf. He is commemorated on 18 July as a saint of the undivided Church, by the New Calendar.