Hildegrim of Châlons

Saint Hildegrim was Bishop of Châlons and the second abbot of Werden Abbey in the age of Charlemagne. The younger brother of Saint Ludger, he laboured like him to bring Christianity to the Saxons and Frisians after the Saxon Wars. The Church remembers him on 19 June.

Early life

He was born in the 750s into a Christian Frisian noble family. His father was Count Thiatgrim and his mother Liafburga, daughter of Count Nothard; he had a sister named Heriburga. He began the seven liberal arts under his brother Ludger, continued them at the cathedral school of Utrecht founded by Bishop Gregory, and completed them at York under Alcuin.

Between 784 and 787 he accompanied Ludger on a pilgrimage to Italy. The brothers visited the seven pilgrimage churches of Rome and lived about two and a half years at Monte Cassino, where Hildegrim came to know the Benedictine rule and remained its zealous follower. After returning to the Frankish realm he became a monk. The date is unknown, but a charter of 793 names him a deacon and another of 796 a priest.

Bishop and abbot

Around 802, or 804 according to some sources, he was placed over the diocese of Châlons. Tradition says he had a special devotion to Saint Stephen the Protomartyr, who has been honoured since then as patron of the city. Little else is recorded of his work there.

When Ludger died in 809, Hildegrim received the abbeys of Werden and Helmstedt. It is said that Charlemagne hesitated to entrust them to a bishop and agreed only after consulting Pope Leo III. His doubt was not groundless, for Hildegrim from then on gave his strength to Werden and to spreading the faith in Saxony, though he remained Bishop of Châlons. At his command a chapel with a rounded apse was built at Werden and, with the help of Archbishop Hildebold of Cologne, consecrated in honour of Saint Stephen. The abbey received many gifts from Saxon nobles and from Charlemagne and Louis the Pious.

Mission in Saxony

According to tradition Hildegrim was the first Bishop of Halberstadt, consecrated in 804. Modern historians judge that the see did not yet exist and that he was rather the churchman who cared for the Saxons there. What is certain is that he preached the faith in the Osterwieck and Halberstadt region. Tradition also links the church of Saint Stephen at Osterwieck with his name.

He reposed on 19 June 827 and was buried in the crypt of the abbey church of Werden, beside his brother. He is honoured as a saint by both the Catholic and the Orthodox Church and is commemorated on 19 June.