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Icon of
St. Beatus of Thun, hermit, apostle of Switzerland
Feast: May 9
"According
to oral tradition--often more reliable than the skeptic deliberations
of modern scholarship--the first missionary to the pagan Helvetii was a
first-century hermit of Gaelic origin, St. Beatus (Latin for
"blessed''). He is said to have been baptized in England by St.
Barnabas. Upon his conversion, St. Beatus gave up his earthly
possessions and traveled to Rome where he was ordained by the Apostle
Peter and sent with a companion, Achates, to evangelize the area we
know today as Switzerland. The two missionaries settled in Argovia,
just east of the Jura Mountains, where they persuaded many Helvetians
to abandon their pagan cults of Mars and Hercules and to erect temples
to the true God.
"For
the sake of greater solitude, St. Beatus journeyed south to Interlaken,
He settled into a cave above the lake and there he spent the rest of
his life in prayer and fasting. St. Beatus died in old age c.112.
Veneration of the Saint was popular in the Middle Ages and survived the
hostility of the Reformation period when pilgrims were driven back from
his cave at spear-point by Zwingli's followers. Located in a mountain
named after the Saint, Beattenberg, his cave still exists and remains a
place of pilgrimage.
"Although
the earliest recorded accounts of St. Beatus' life, dating no earlier
than the 10th and mid-11th centuries, have not been historically
authenticated, there is no reason to dismiss them as legendary, as have
( some modern scholars. It should be remembered that Helvetia was
conquered in 58 BC by the Romans whose civilizing influence was
advantageous to early Christian missionary work, in spite of pagan
Rome's hostility. Nevertheless, in the absence of further
documentation, one would hesitate to agree with a later tradition that
calls St. Beatus the Apostle of Switzerland. This honor has been more
justly conferred upon St. Gall, one of that great company of Irish
monks whose major contribution towards the conversion of Gaul, Germany,
the Low Countries and Switzerland remains to be fully appreciated. But
even before St. Galls arrival in the early 7th century, Christianity
had been making inroads into Switzerland, peopling its rugged landscape
with monastics and watering its soil with the blood of martyrs."
- from Orthodox America
Holy
Father Beatus, pray to God for us!
Icon from St. Ann's Workshop
in Switzerland.
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