Hermann of Reichenau

Hermann of Reichenau, also called Hermann the Lame (Hermannus Contractus), was a learned Benedictine monk, chronicler and composer, born on 18 July 1013 and reposed at the monastery of Reichenau on 24 September 1054, aged forty-⁠one. He is honored as a blessed; his veneration and beatification were confirmed by the Roman Catholic Church in 1863, and his day of remembrance is 25 September.

He was a son of the count of Altshausen and was born with a disability; he moved with great difficulty and could hardly speak. At seven his parents, who could no longer care for him, gave him to a Benedictine monastery. He grew up in the abbey of Reichenau, on an island in Lake Constance, learned from the monks and developed a keen interest in theology and in the world. At twenty he entered their order as a monk, became literate in several languages, among them Arabic, Greek and Latin, and contributed to all four arts of the quadrivium.

He wrote about history, mathematics, astronomy and Christianity. He wrote a treatise on the science of music, several works on geometry and arithmetic and astronomical treatises, among them instructions for building an astrolabe, whence he was sometimes counted its inventor. As a historian he wrote a detailed chronicle from the birth of Christ to his own day, ordered after the Christian era, later continued by his pupil Berthold of Reichenau. He was a known religious poet and composer; among his surviving works are the offices of Saint Afra and Saint Wolfgang. When he went blind in old age he began to write hymns. Tradition attributes to him the Salve Regina, Veni Sancte Spiritus and Alma Redemptoris Mater, though these attributions are sometimes questioned.

He is honored as a blessed in the West, who died shortly before the separation of 1054; no Orthodox synodal canonization is known.