Saint Hunger

Saint Hunger, also known as Hungerus Frisus, served as bishop of Utrecht in the mid-ninth century. The year of his birth is unknown, and no reliable source records his birthplace or the details of his family beyond the tradition that he was of Frisian origin. He assumed the see of Utrecht around 854. At that time the bishopric, whose origins lay in the Anglo-Saxon mission of Saint Willibrord, encompassed much of the northern Low Countries. The political setting was the divided Carolingian world after the Treaty of Verdun (843), with Utrecht lying in the middle kingdom that became Lotharingia.

Viking activity on the Rhine, the Lek, and in the emporium of Dorestad made the region unstable. In 857 forces linked to Rorik of Dorestad occupied Utrecht, and the city ceased to be a secure episcopal residence. Hunger withdrew with clergy from Utrecht. He first found refuge at the monastery of Sint Odiliënberg (Odilienberg) in the valley of the Roer, in what is now the Dutch province of Limburg. Relics and the portable elements of the church of Utrecht were taken from the threatened city. For a number of years the bishop governed in exile, and the regular urban life of the diocese was interrupted.

Hunger subsequently resided at the imperial abbey of Prüm in the Eifel, a leading Carolingian monastery in Lotharingia and the burial place of Emperor Lothair I. In these years the bishops of the middle kingdom were drawn into the dispute over the marriage of King Lothair II, who attempted to repudiate Queen Theutberga and legitimize his union with Waldrada. The case involved synods in the Frankish kingdoms and the intervention of Pope Nicholas I. Hunger belonged to the episcopate of Lotharingia during this controversy, though the surviving sources do not preserve a full record of every position he took.

Hunger died at Prüm on 22 December 866 and was buried at the abbey. He is venerated as a saint, and his feast day is kept on 22 December. No papal act of canonization in the later formal sense is recorded; his cult reflects the older custom of commemorating a bishop who had died in the peace of the Church after a difficult episcopate. Little hagiographical legend accumulated around his name, and he remains a relatively obscure figure except in the history of the diocese of Utrecht and of the ninth-century church in the Low Countries and Lotharingia.