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Biography

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Saint Sturm (also known as Sturmius or Sturmi) was an eighth-century Bavarian Benedictine monk, a disciple of Saint Boniface, and the founder and first abbot of the Abbey of Fulda. He was born in the Duchy of Bavaria to a noble Christian family in the early eighth century; neither the exact year nor a specific town of birth is recorded in the surviving sources. As a youth he was placed under Boniface, who sent him to the monastery of Fritzlar in Hesse, then governed by Abbot Wigbert, for his education in letters and the monastic life. After ordination to the priesthood he worked as a missionary in the still largely unevangelized districts of northern Hesse.

In the 740s Boniface resolved to found a major monastery that would serve both as a center of Benedictine observance and as a base for the conversion of central Germany. He charged Sturm with locating a suitable site. After searching the wilderness, Sturm chose a remote place in the wooded valley of the Fulda River, on land granted by Carloman, mayor of the palace. The monastery of Fulda was established there (conventionally dated to 744), and Sturm became its first abbot. To ground the new community in authentic Benedictine practice he traveled to Italy and spent a period at Monte Cassino, then the principal house of the order, before returning to Fulda. Under his rule the abbey grew rapidly in numbers and influence and became one of the foremost monastic and educational centers in the Frankish lands north of the Alps.

Sturm’s later abbacy was marked by a jurisdictional conflict with Lullus, Boniface’s successor as archbishop of Mainz, who sought to bring Fulda under episcopal control. Sturm defended the independence that Boniface had intended for the house. In the course of the dispute, around 763, King Pepin the Short removed him from office and sent him into exile at the Neustrian monastery of Jumièges. After about two years, following petitions from the monks of Fulda, he was restored to the abbacy, and the house’s independence was subsequently confirmed. In his later years Sturm accompanied Charlemagne on campaigns in Saxony and took part in missionary work among the Saxons.

He died at Fulda on 17 December 779 and was buried in the abbey church. His life was written soon afterward by Eigil, a later abbot of Fulda, in the Vita Sturmi, an important early medieval monastic biography from Germany. A cult formed at his tomb. He was canonized in 1139 by Pope Innocent II. His feast is kept on 17 December, and he is venerated as the patron saint of Fulda.

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