Saint Sturm

Description

Saint Sturm (c. 705 – 17 December 779), also called Sturmius or Sturmi, was a disciple of Saint Boniface and founder and first abbot of the Benedictine monastery and abbey of Fulda in 742 or 744. Sturm’s tenure as abbot lasted from 747 until 779.Sturm was born c. 705 in Lorch, Austria, and was most likely related to the Agilolfing dukes of Bavaria. He met Saint Boniface c. 735 when the latter was carrying out the church reorganization in Bavaria and Austria (founding the bishoprics of Salzburg, Regensburg and Würzburg). He joined Boniface and was educated in the Benedictine monastery of Fritzlar by abbot Saint Wigbert. He was then active as a missionary in northern Hesse, where in 736 he established a monastic settlement in Haerulfisfeld (Hersfeld). Ordained in 740 as priest in Fritzlar, Sturm was instructed by Boniface in 744 to establish a monastery in the region of Eichloha, which had been granted to Boniface by the Frankish Mayor of the Palace Carloman. In the ruins of a 6th-century Merovingian royal camp, destroyed 50 years earlier by the Saxons, at a ford on the Fulda River, Sturm established the monastery.