Saint Engelbert

The Theocrat

Join me today to meet the flawed theocrat who became a saint.

Statue of Saint Engelbert before Burg Castle, Solingen, by Paul Wynand, 20th c. [Frank Vincentz]

Name: Engelbert II of Berg, Engelbert I of Cologne

Life: 1185 - 1225 AD

Status: Saint

Feast: November 7

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About a year after the death of Engelbert, Saint Engelbert as he was already being called, the new archbishop of Cologne asked the monk Caesarius of Heisterbach to write the story of Engelbert’s life.

It was an interesting case. On the one hand, miracles were being reported by those asking for the intercession of Saint Engelbert. On the other hand, Engelbert did not exactly have a good reputation. Whoever sorted out the details was sure to offend many who were still alive. And anyway, Caesarius had plenty of other things to write about, and his work was so much in demand that the monks of his monastery kept stealing his papers to rush them to publication before he was done.

Caesarius turned the job down.

But then the Archbishop insisted, and Caesarius, in a spirit of obedience to his superior, turned his scholarly mind to the strange story of the man who, until very recently, had been the theocrat of Cologne.

The most important fact about Engelbert was that he was Engelebert von Berg, a member of the powerful House of Berg. Engelbert had been a second son, which meant that his older brother had become the Count of Berg, ruling from his fortress a little North of the city of Cologne, in the West of modern Germany. Cologne itself was not part of the County of Berg. It was ruled by the Archbishop, who had the same status as a duke. But for the last century, the House of Berg had placed their second sons in the Church and used their influence to help their careers, with the result that quite often the archbishop of Cologne was a member of the House of Berg too.

Looking into Engelbert’s childhood, Caesarius did not find anything very saintly to report. Engelbert was - as Caesarius carefully put it - a priest among priests, and a knight among knights. This was to say, Engelbert was a powerful man who didn’t mind conflict. What set him apart from others, though, was his mind. Engelbert was extremely intelligent with an answer for every problem and a plan for every situation. Engelbert put his mind to work to advance the fortunes of his house. The best way to do that, he figured, was to go to work for another member of the Berg dynasty, Adolf, Archbishop of Cologne. Engelbert positioned himself to become Archbishop after his mentor died.

This was how things often went among the German bishops. Nobody thought it was right. Saint Hildegard of Bingen had blasted the German bishops for being more interested in power than the Church a few decades before. A priest in Paris had summed things up well, bragging that his faith would allow him to believe many things, just not that a German bishop could be saved. And so it was in Cologne, where the Archbishops spent more time worrying about fending off predatory neighbours like the Duke of Limburg than worrying about the salvation of souls.

Engelbert’s own journey to power was halted when his mentor, Archbishop Adolf, made the mistake of backing a rival to the Holy Roman Emperor. The two claimants to the throne devastated the area around Cologne, and in the end, the Holy Roman Emperor prevailed. Adolf was expelled from his position as Archbishop.

Engelbert was in his late 20s. The House of Berg was struggling to get on the right side of the conflict. And so Engelbert did something that would at least boost his popularity with ordinary people: he went on crusade.

Most crusaders travelled to the East. But now the pope had called for a crusade in the West, for in the South of modern France, in the area around the city of Toulouse, an ancient heresy had returned. Christians called these heretics Albigensians, because of their base in the town of Albi near Toulouse, but the heretics called themselves Cathars, pure ones. They were pure, the Cathars believed, because they had taken the side of a good god in a cosmic struggle between good and evil deities. Physicality and bodily things are the domains of the bad god, and the Cathar perfects - their priests - taught an ascetic way of purification that would allow them to become incorporeal spirits like the good god they worshipped.

By the time Engelbert got to the crusade, the count of Toulouse had stepped in on the side of the Cathars, and his city was under siege. It would not be an easy fight, but outnumbered as they often were, the crusaders would prevail. Perhaps Engelbert stayed until the fall of the city, several years later. That victory was a logical moment to leave - although the fighting of the Cathar Crusade would continue for another decade, and the Cathars would not vanish completely until another century had passed.

Not long after the fall of Toulouse, the situation in Cologne changed again. The Holy Roman Emperor was toppled from power, and this time, the Bergs had backed the winner. Cologne needed a new archbishop, and Engelbert was the perfect candidate: well-connected, competent, brave, and fresh from the crusades. And so it was that Engelbert was unanimously chosen as the next Archbishop of Cologne.

Now that he was in power, Engelbert set out to show that the new Cologne would not tolerate attacks. He sent his military out to suppress the bandits who had come in the wake of war. The Duke of Limburg had set up a fortress in the lands of Cologne, betting that no one would do anything about it. Engelbert rode out and burned the fortress to the ground.

Engelbert ran Cologne with military efficiency. One year the crops failed, and Engelbert organized a military style grain supply, shipping in grain and using monasteries as distribution hubs. Taxes were high, but Cologne and the area around the city were being rebuilt. Soon it became safe to travel again. By now Engelbert was so well known that when the Holy Roman Emperor went on crusade, the emperor entrusted the archbishop with the education of his son - and put Engelbert in charge of administering the Holy Roman Empire.

Silver coin minted by Saint Engelbert as Bishop of Cologne

Engelbert was now at the pinnacle of his career. And it was at this point that Caesarius began to find hints of a change happening in the archbishop. It seemed to be connected to the new monastic orders. Engelbert was an example of the old Church: rich, political, and complacent. But new sorts of Christians were coming into Cologne. The Dominicans, who were teachers and preachers. The Franciscans, called to lives of total poverty. The Templars and Hospitallers, who gave up their lands and titles to defend the faith. Engelbert welcomed these new orders to his city. The more he saw of them, the more they seem to have affected him.

Caesarius found one story about a friar who denounced the powerful theocrat of Cologne to his face for taxing the people too heavily. Nobody spoke that way to the archbishop. But Engelbert humbly said that the friar was right. Then he sat down with the friar and showed him the economic situation of Cologne. Taxes were high, he knew, but they were suppressing bandits and rebuilding the area. Taxes were buying order and peace.

Yes, the archbishop was still buying beautiful new vestments. But those who watched carefully realized that he was slipping them to his priests, beautifying the Church throughout his lands. The archbishop knew that people were afraid of him. He started using that fear to put the poor and the widows under his personal protection. When one man was robbed on the way into the city, Englebert responded by sending a letter with his seal to the bandits asking them nicely to please give back every single thing they had stolen. The bandits, considering the smoldering remains of the Duke of Limburg’s fortress, did not need to be asked a second time.

Episcopal Seal of Saint Engelbert

As Caesarius put together the story of the archbishop, he realized the way in which Engelbert had been unusual. Many people call on God when their fortunes fail. Engelbert was that rare man who had gotten everything he had ever wanted only to realize how little it all meant. The theocrat of Cologne looked at the penniless Franciscans wandering into his city in bare feet and wondered how he could be more like them. Engelbert’s confidantes would later confirm that he had been grappling with the position in which he found himself. The Church was being renewed, reformed, and Engelbert found himself changing along with it.

This was the moment, when Englebert was trying to change from an aristocrat who happened to be an archbishop to an archbishop who happened to be an aristocrat that a problem landed on his desk that would force him to choose between these two identities. A relative of the House of Berg, the Count of Isenberg, was extorting money from a convent of nuns. Even though it was outside Engelbert’s domain, the pope asked him to step in to help the nuns.

The smart move was to ignore the request. Popes came and went, and the House of Berg had gotten this far by sticking together. But Engelbert, now almost 40, was not the man he had once been. He went to work out an arrangement with the Count of Isenberg. Engelbert had been playing the game of politics for long enough to realize that taking the side of some nuns against his family would leave him isolated and vulnerable. But the truth was, he was sick of politics. He met repeatedly with his confessor, speaking of his regrets and the sins of his past. Engelbert was already working out a plan to leave Cologne on crusade, this time to the Holy Land. But first he would have to ride out with his bodyguard to meet the Count of Isenberg.

It was a long ride, and on the way, the Archbishop was interrupted by a widow, who ran after the riders shouting that she wanted justice. Engelbert stopped and listened to her case. He soon realized that the way she had lost her property had been lawful. Justice, Engelbert told the widow, had already been done. But in this case, the wise man needed to look to beyond the question of justice and consider mercy also, for God was merciful. Engelbert restored what had been taken from the woman, and hurried on to his meeting.

The meeting with the Count of Isenberg went better than Engelbert could have hoped. The Count agreed to everything, and suggested that he and Engelbert travel a while together. Something was off. Going through a ravine, at a signal, the Count’s men burst out of cover, and most of Engelbert’s bodyguards ran. The one knight who stayed to fight was cut down by a faster swordsman. The swordsman tried to grab Engelbert, but Engelbert had always been, as Caesarius put it, a knight among knights, so he tossed the swordsman out of his way and broke for the forest.

Archbishop Engelbert is pursued by the man of the Count of Isenberg, Fresco in Cologne, 19th c.

Engelbert might have made it to safety, if his bodyguard had stayed with him. As it was, there were simply too many attackers. Engelbert was caught, held down, and the Count of Isenberg’s men stabbed him with knives and swords, 47 times. They looted his vestments and left the bloody body lying in the road.

Caesarius had been shocked, along with everyone else, to learn of the death of the powerful archbishop. Now Engelbert’s enemies moved quickly. The Count of Isenberg consolidated his position. The Duke of Limburg snapped up a castle in the lands of Cologne. When a few of Engelbert’s men crept back to their lord’s broken body on the road, they had to borrow a peasant’s manure cart to bring the body with them. The first town they came to refused to let them in.

Engelbert’s men brought his body to a monastery. Engelbert had always treated the monastery with respect, and now the monks came out in procession to see the body. One elderly monk limped over to try to rearrange the body in the cart - and as he touched it, he would later confirm to Caesarius, the monk felt his limp begin to heal. This was the first of many miracles.

As reports of miracles began to come in, people reconsidered the legacy of the theocrat of Cologne. Could it be that before their eyes, Engelbert had become a different sort of archbishop? At the end, he had chosen the service of God over the advancement of the Bergs, and he had been martyred for it. The city of Cologne mourned. The Count of Isenberg found public opinion turning against him, and he fled, a wanted man. The Duke of Limburg told anyone who would listen that he hadn’t actually snatched a castle, his men had done it against his orders to make him look bad. The Holy Roman Empire paused to mark the strange life of Archbishop Engelbert - and the monk Caesarius of Heisterbach began to do his research.

In telling the story to the new archbishop of Cologne, Caesarius fell back on Jesus’ own description of the Church in the world as a huge flock of animals, the sheep and the goats all mixed in together. It can be difficult to tell which is which. Caesarius drew out a nuance of Jesus’ metaphor, which is that not every sheep must be a passive lamb or ewe. There must also be the male sheep, the rams: ornery and violent and prone to launching themselves at strangers. These are sheep too, charging forward into salvation, and such had been the life of Engelbert of Cologne.

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