Berthold of Garsten

Berthold of Garsten (Berthold von Garsten) was a German Benedictine monk and abbot of the twelfth century, venerated in the Catholic Church as Blessed Berthold. A precise year and place of birth are not preserved in contemporary records; later tradition places his origin in the later eleventh century among the German nobility and associates his early formation with the Abbey of Saint Blaise (Sankt Blasien) in the Black Forest. Saint Blaise was then a principal house of the Hirsau reform, which sought to restore strict communal observance of the Rule of Saint Benedict, influenced in part by Cluniac custom. In that setting he was trained in liturgical prayer, enclosure, and regular discipline, which later marked his own abbacy.

From Saint Blaise he was sent to the monastery of Göttweig in the Danube region of what is now Lower Austria, a house drawn into the same reform. In the early twelfth century Margrave Ottokar II of Styria converted an existing community of secular canons at Garsten, near Steyr in the Enns valley, into a Benedictine abbey and obtained monks from Göttweig for the new convent. Berthold was named first abbot of Garsten and held that office from about the second decade of the twelfth century until his death, becoming the founding abbot of an important reformed Benedictine house in the southeastern German and Austrian lands.

During an abbacy of some three decades he is credited with implanting Hirsau-style observance at Garsten, organizing monastic life, and tying the abbey to the pastoral and social needs of the surrounding population. Later hagiographical tradition, which must be used cautiously where it is conventional or late, stresses his charity toward the poor and the sick, hospitality according to the Benedictine rule, and the support of a hospice or infirmary connected with the monastery. He is also remembered as a spiritual adviser to the Styrian margraves of the Otakar family. Surviving administrative detail from his lifetime is sparse; the fuller portrait of his sanctity comes chiefly from later medieval vitae and from the cult that grew up at his tomb.

Berthold died at Garsten on 27 July 1142 and was buried in the abbey church. Local veneration began after his death: pilgrims visited his grave and accounts of miracles circulated. He has been honored as Blessed Berthold of Garsten, with liturgical commemoration on 27 July, especially in Upper Austria and among Benedictines. Garsten Abbey was suppressed in the late eighteenth century under Emperor Joseph II, but the former abbey church survives as a parish church and his memory has remained part of regional Catholic devotion. He does not appear to have been the subject of a fully documented modern papal canonization; his status as Blessed rests on immemorial cult and later ecclesiastical acknowledgment of that cult.