Fridolin of Säckingen

Venerable Fridolin of Säckingen is an Irish missionary, more legendary than secure in history, called the apostle of the Alamanni and founder of Säckingen Abbey on the Upper Rhine. He is patron of the Swiss canton of Glarus. He is venerated mainly in the West and commemorated on 6 March.

The sources

The earliest mention of him is in the records of the priest Hatto, at the end of the ninth century, who made an inventory of the abandoned monastery for fear of the Normans. The list includes a codex bound in silver and ivory containing the lives of Fridolin, Hilary and Arnulf. The surviving Life was written by the monk Balther of Säckingen, probably in the tenth century, and gives neither historical nor chronological setting, but many miracles and visions. Balther says that he took it from a biography discovered in a monastery at Helera on the Moselle, also founded by Fridolin, which he learned by heart because he lacked enough parchment and ink. Scholars are divided: some believe that Balther relied on an older oral tradition, others regard the Life as a forgery of the mid-⁠eleventh century. So very little can be said of the historical person. It seems that Fridolin was an Irish missionary among the Alamanni on the Upper Rhine, then under Merovingian rule, who founded Säckingen Abbey.

The tradition

Later tradition places the beginning of his mission in the time of King Clovis I and his death in the time of Theudebert I, on 6 March 538 or 540. Historians today incline to place the founding of the abbey in the seventh century, under Clovis II.

According to the Life, Fridolin came from a noble family in Ireland and began as a missionary there. Crossing then to France, he came to Poitiers, where, after a vision, he sought out the relics of Saint Hilary and built a church for them. Saint Hilary appeared to him in a dream and commanded him to go to an island in the Rhine, in the land of the Alamanni. Fridolin asked King Clovis for the still unknown island and received it, then passed through Strasbourg and Chur, building churches everywhere in honour of Saint Hilary.

Reaching the island of Säckingen, he recognised in it the island of the dream and prepared to build a church there. The inhabitants of the banks, who pastured their cattle on the island, took him for a cattle thief and drove him off. When he produced Clovis's deed of gift, he was allowed to return and build the church and the monastery. Then he resumed his missionary work, founded the Scottish monastery at Konstanz and extended his mission as far as Augsburg. He died on 6 March and was buried at Säckingen.

The legend of Glarus

The connection with Glarus rests on a late legend, an addition of the thirteenth century to Balther's Life. Fridolin is said to have converted a landowner, Ursus, who at his death left him his lands in the Linth valley, the future canton of Glarus. Ursus's brother Landolf contested the gift and brought Fridolin before a court at Rankweil. Fridolin is said to have summoned Ursus from the dead to confirm the gift in person, and Landolf, terrified, gave him his own lands as well. For this reason Fridolin is painted with the skeleton of Ursus. His veneration at Glarus is tied to the fact that the valley belonged to Säckingen Abbey.

Veneration

The existence of monasteries dedicated to Saint Hilary at Säckingen, Strasbourg, Chur and other places points to a movement of veneration of Hilary in the seventh century, when the Alamanni became Christian, and Fridolin may have been a representative of it. His relics are venerated at Säckingen. His cult is attested from the end of the ninth century.