FULDA. The monastery of Fulda occupies the place in the ecclesiastical history of mid Germany which Monte Cassino holds in Italy, St Galle in south Germany, Corvey in north Germany, Tours in France, and Iona in Scotland. It was the centre of a missionary work, both of conversion and reformation, organized on monastic principles. The monastery of Fulda was only one of several founded by Boniface, the so called “apostle of Germany,” but it was specially favoured by its founder, who selected it for his burying place, and it was by far the most important. The first abbot was Sturmius, the son of noble Christian parents in Noricum, who along with several other youths left their homes to follow Boniface, and were trained by him for missionary work. Boniface, notwithstanding his intense hatred of the Celtic missionaries, the true apostles of Germany, was content to imitate their mode of evangelical work; and the monastery of Fulda, though under Benedictine rule, in almost all respects resembled the great missionary institutions of Tours and Iona. Sturmius was sent by his master to seek for a convenient place for the monastery, and after two unsuccessful efforts he at length found a spot on the banks of the Fulda which Boniface approved of. A grant of the site, with four miles of surrounding demesne, was obtained from Carloman. Boniface himself superintended the clearing of the forest and the erection of the building. He sent Sturmius for a year to Italy to visit monasteries, and especially to study the mode of life in the great Benedictine convent of Monte Cassino. The Benedictine rule was adopted, and Sturmius with seven companions began their work of preaching, education, and civilization. They taught the rude tribes agriculture, masonry, and the other arts of peace. ...Soon a school was formed, and the educational organization seems to have resembled in the closest way that of the great Celtic monasteries. The school at Fulda speedily became the most famous portion of the monastery, and was the centre of the earlier mediaeval theological learning. Rabanus Maurus, the first of the schoolmen, was a teacher in the convent school, and many of the most famous princes of the times were educated in the lay-school. When Alcuin laid the basis of the university system of mediaeval Europe, it was to Fulda as well as to Durham and Scotland that he looked for help in carrying out his designs. Fulda became the parent of many other missionary monasteries, the most famous of these being Hirschau in Swabia. In 968 the abbot of Fulda was recognized as primate of the other abbeys of Germany; but wealth and power brought corruption. In the beginning of the 11th century the monastery had to be reformed, and this was done by turning out the old monks, bringing a number of new ones from Scotland, and reestablishing in all its strictness the old Benedictine rule. The later history of Fulda has merely an antiquarian and local interest. Its practical work was done when the evangelization of Germany was complete; for Fulda, like the Celtic monasteries, was fitted for missionary work and little else. Investigations have shown curious sympathies with the Reformation of the 16th century among the abbots and monks of Fulda.
See the life of Sturmius in Pertz’s Monumenta Germ., ii.; Rettberg’s Kirchen-Gesch. Deutschlands·, Mil man’s Latin Christianity, bk. iii. 5; and for the reformed tendencies of Fulda an interesting article in Niedner’s Zñtsch. für Hist. Theologie, 1846.
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