Oranne of Eschweiler

Saint Oranne of Eschweiler (in German Oranna) is a saint who is said to have lived in the sixth century. She is commemorated on 15 September (new style, Western calendar) and is invoked above all for ailments of the ear and for dizziness; she is patron of German-⁠speaking Lorraine.

According to tradition she preached the faith in the basins of the Moselle and the Saar together with her companion Cyrilla, the two settling in the district of Berus. They were buried in the church of the village of Eschweiler, later abandoned after the destruction of the wars of the fourteenth century; all that remains is the chapel of Saint Oranne (Orannakapelle), a much-⁠loved place of pilgrimage. Legend makes her a princess from Ireland or Scotland who fled her country to serve God in solitude, like her brother, Saint Wendelin; her father is said to have been the viceroy Frochard and her mother Iveline. Another source makes her the daughter of a Lorraine duke who rejected her because of her deafness. She is said to have saved a Frankish hunter lost in a Lorraine forest and cured him of his deafness.

The bones of Saints Oranne and Cyrilla were taken up in 1480, according to a deed of 3 May, and laid back in a sarcophagus. On 17 September 1719 the relics were moved to the church of Saint Martin at Berus; during the French Revolution the faithful hid them in a crevice of the forest. Since 22 September 1969 they have rested in the chapel, whose stained-⁠glass windows tell the saint's story. She is a saint of the undivided Church, honoured locally.