Saint of the Day – 31 May – Blessed Hermann of Marienstatt O.Cist. (1150-c1225) Cistercian Monk and Abbot of the Himmerod Abbey; founding Abbot of Heisterbach and Marienstatt Monasteries, Hermann was a zealous and powerful administrator, blessed with the gifts of prophecy, visions and miracles, Born in 1150 in the Rhineland (in modern Germany) and died in c1225 in Himmerod, Germany of natural causes.
Hermann is mentioned as Abbot for the last time in 1225. Soon after, he seems to have lived as a simple Monk in Himmerod, where he died around that time. In the Cistercian Order’s calendar, the commemoration (memoria) of “the Blessed Abbot Hermann, who laid the foundations of Marienstatt and who was famous for his gift of prophecy and also for many other miraculous signs” is recorded on 31 May.
Hermann von Marienstatt was born in 1150 into a noble Rhenish family (Rhenish meaning ‘of the Rhine’). He was initially a Canon at the St Cassius and Florentius Monastery in Bonn but , in around 1175, he joined the Cistercian Abbey of Himmerod.
When, in 1177, the Archbishop of Cologne, Philipp von Heinsberg, offered the Cistercians the property of a defunct Augustinian Canonry on the Stromberg – today’s Petersberg in the Siebengebirge – as a donation, Monks from Himmerod, led by Hermann as founding Abbot, more than 10 years later, in 1189, finally complied and took over the former Monastery.
Due to the unfavourable mountain location, the Convent soon moved to the nearby valley of the Heisterbach (1192-1199), from which the new Abbey took the name Heisterbach. From 1195, Abbot Hermann worked in Himmerod again. Endowments by Cologne Burgrave Eberhard von Aremberg and his wife Adelheid von Molsberg prompted Himmerod, together with its daughter Monastery, Heisterbach, to undertake one last founding action. In 1212, under the proven leadership of our Blessed Hermann, twelve Monks settled near Neunkhausen ‘at the place of St Maria’ – since then known as Marienstatt. Disputes over inheritance law within the founding family soon forced the abandonment of this site. Thanks to a new foundation by the Counts of Sayn the Cistercians were able to gain a foothold in the Westerwald again. In this context, Hermann is now also attested in Marienstatt documents.
These events were later given legend on 27 December 1324.and recorded in writing, in the “Marienstatter Tafeln” the document for the Consecration of the Church. This iconographically valuable document is now in the Rheinisches Landes Museum in Bonn. Its border is decorated with fictitious portraits of the Abbots, beginning with Hermann.
The text tells us that the Mother of God appeared to the worried Abbot in a dream and showed him an alternative building site, where a “hawthorn bush” blooms in the middle of winter. Its branch still adorns the Abbey’s Coat of Arms today, see below.
Hermann had to manage the founding of two Monasteries which were made difficult by geographical disadvantage, inheritance disputes and, in the case of Heisterbach, resistance from the population. When this happened, the Cistercian movement had already passed its peak in the area and was facing competition from new religious movements. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for Hermann’s resignation and retirement.
AnaStpaul 