Gregory of Burtscheid

Venerable Gregory of Burtscheid (Gregor von Burtscheid, also called in Germany Gregory of Calabria or Gregory of Cassano) was a Greek monk from Calabria and the first abbot of the Burtscheid Abbey, founded on the order of Otto III, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. He was born about 940 and died on 4 November 999. He is a saint of the West, venerated in the Roman Catholic Church; our sources mention no Orthodox canonization.

He was born at Cerchiara di Calabria, in the province of Cosenza, at a time when that region was still under the influence of the Byzantine Empire. Emperor Otto III founded the Burtscheid Abbey in 997, in the independent city of Burtscheid, and installed as first abbot Gregory, who until then had been abbot of the Basilian monastery of Saint Andrew in Calabria. Gregory died on 4 November 999 with a reputation as a holy man, and therefore, after his death, his bones were kept in the nearby chapel of Saint Nicholas. About 1190 an abbot named Arnold moved the bones to the abbey church.

By the end of the twelfth century Gregory had received the honour of the altars, and the day of his death was kept as a feast at the abbey until it was dissolved in 1802. In the heavy bombing of the city of Burtscheid on 11 April 1944 Gregory's grave was destroyed. The remnants of the bones that could be salvaged were kept in a silver casket. These small reliquaries were moved in 1996 to the Berdolet altar, which stands in the church of Saint John in Aachen-⁠Burtscheid, where the abbey church once stood. Since 2010 Abbot Gregory has been the patron of the dissolved parishes of Saint Gregory, the Sacred Heart, Saint John and Saint Michael, as well as of the newly founded parish of Saint Gregory of Burtscheid.