Here is an excerpt from the Life of Saint Sturm (705-779?) the Abbot of Fulda (Vita s. Sturmi abates Fuldensis) regarding Sturm’s trip up the Fulda river on a mission from Saint Boniface (same one who cut down the Holy Oak of Donar).
Sturm’s mission was to discover a suitable place where Boniface could found a monastery. Sturm was a young Bavarian noble who was excited to join Boniface in a life of monastic joy. Before that joy, however, the young virtuous Bavarian would be sorely tempted.
The year of our story is somewhere between 736 and 744:
“[7] Then one day, while he was traveling , he came to the merchant road that leads from Thuringia to Mainz. At a place where the road crosses over the river Fulda, there was a large multitude of Slavs who discovered the same river swimming in its streams, washing their bodies and snorkeling; their nude bodies made the ass [on which Sturm was riding] tremble in fear and even the man of God found their smells frightening as they mocked the servant of the Lord. And when they wished to do him harm, they were stopped by divine power. One of them who was their interpreter asked him where he was going. And he answered he was going to the hills in the wilderness.”
Slavs’ bathing naturally frightened the gentle Sturm
(Tunc quadam die dum pergeret, pervenit ad viam, quae a Turingorum regione mercandi causa ad Magontiam pergentes ducit; ubi platea illa super flumen Fuldam vadit, ibi magnam Sclavorum multitudinem repreit eiusdem fluminis alveo natantes, lavandis corporibus se immersisse; quorum nuda corpora animal cui praesidebat pertimescens, tremere coepit; et ipse vir Dei eorum foetorem exhorruit, qui more gentilium servum Domini subsannabant, et cum eum laedere voluissent, divina potentia compressi et prohibiti sunt. Unus autem ex illis qui erat ipsorum interpres, interrogavit eum quo tenderet? Cui ille respondit, in superiorem partem eremi se fore iturum.)
Sturm felt much safer in the Fulda church
In case you were concerned what happened to Sturm: he followed the course of the river into the wilderness until he was able to find an appropriate place for the founding of the Fulda abbey. Here Saint Boniface laid the foundations of the monastery (named after the Fulda river) and Sturm was made its first abbot.
Location of Fulda in Germany
And they all lived happily ever after.
Well, not exactly, after Boniface was killed by Frisian highwaymen, Sturm got into a fight with Lull or Lullus, the successor to Boniface as archbishop of Mainz over who would keep the old man’s bone. Sturm won the relics but got bitchslapped by Lullus who complained about him to Pepin king of the Franks. Although Sturm was exiled he managed to get back into graces with Pepin and came back to run the monastery.
Problems continued for Sturm afterwards as the pagan Saxons attacked Fulda and Sturm and his fellow monks were forced to flee into the forest. But then the Saxons left, the monks came back, Sturm died and the Saxons were slaughtered by Charlemagne. Then Eigil of Noricum wrote the Life of Saint Sturm which is the work cited above.
And after that everyone lived happily ever after (except the local Slavs, of course).
The monastery’s unconventional design was intended to keep any eye on the Saxons and the Slavs
For more on the topic see the C. H. Talbot edition in “The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany, Being the Lives of SS. Willibrord, Boniface, Leoba and Lebuin together with the Hodoepericon of St. Willibald and a selection from the correspondence of St. Boniface.”
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