Read the Amazing Story of St. Corbinian’s Bear
A Brief History of Saint Corbinian (and his Bear)
From St. Corbinian's Bear Lenten Companion for Bearish Humans
40 Short Bear Tales By Tim & Kathryn Capps
Illustrated by Ragan Black
The author has been bold to incorporate the real St. Corbinian in his Bear stories, because they are so closely associated. So there may be no confusion between what is known of the saint and the artistic license taken by the author, here are the facts.
The brief story of the encounter between St. Corbinian and the bear was written by Arbeo (d. 784), Bishop of Freising.
Travel was perilous in the period commonly known as the Dark Ages. Bandits and wild animals abounded. The Alpine passes were difficult and posed their own dangers.
As St. Corbinian traveled to Rome, a bear killed his pack animal. God miraculously tamed the bear and it carried the baggage of the saint in place of the unfortunate horse. Upon his arrival at Rome, St. Corbinian set the beast free and the bear disappeared from history and into legend.
And one blog and one book.
Perhaps the story is meant to symbolize St. Corbinian taming the savage Germans by bringing them to true Christianity. It has also been interpreted as the unwilling, but obedient assumption by the Frankish hermit of the duties imposed upon him by the Pope. However, the loss of a pack animal--and therefore all your supplies--while traversing an Alpine pass was no mere inconvenience. If God had marked St. Corbinian as his man in Bavaria, he could have worked the miracle just as reported.
There are no ancient accounts that the bear ever talked, let alone blogged.
The fictional Bear whose Lenten Companion you are reading retains a weakness for the ponies and that does not mean betting on horse races. It would not be unreasonable to see in this your own weaknesses, nor in the worst elements of his Bearish nature what St. Paul called “the flesh.”
St. Corbinian is the patron saint of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. The original Freising diocese was not organized until shortly after the death of St. Corbinian, but he founded a Benedictine abbey there. The remains of St. Corbinian are entombed in the Cathedral in which Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, was ordained. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was Archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977-1982.
St. Corbinian’s Bear is the symbol of Freising and is prominent on its city coat of arms. The image of the burdened bear appears most famously on the papal coat of arms of Pope Benedict XVI.
Freising is known for its civic celebration of bears, featuring many statues painted in colorful and whimsical fashion. One is a variation on the burdened bear theme: the bear is carrying two great barrels of beer.
Freising is the home of the oldest working brewery in the world.
The feast day of St. Corbinian is September 8.
The Last Real Bear In Germany
It turns out that some Germans prefer their bears as statues.
The last known real bear in Germany, officially designated JJ1, and unofficially known as “Bruno,” was proclaimed Problembär by Bavarian minister-president Edmund Stoiber. Bruno eluded capture and humiliated authorities by leaving a dead a guinea pig on the steps of a police station. On orders of Stoiber, Bruno was hunted down and killed in 2006. His stuffed remains are displayed in humiliating fashion in the Museum of Man and Nature in Munich.
A Wikileaks diplomatic cable revealed that U.S. diplomats stationed in Munich took a keen, if sardonic, interest in the fate of Bruno. “SUBJECT: BRUNO’S LAST STAND - FIRST WILD BEAR IN 170 YEARS PROVES TOO WILD FOR BAVARIA.” It makes for some entertaining reading at https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06MUNICH397_a.html .
The diplomatic fallout continues. Italy has demanded the return of their bear. Bavaria has refused.
St. Corbinian (from Butler’s Lives of the Saints)
He was a native of France, being born at Chatre, on the road to Orleans, and he lived a recluse fourteen years in a cell which he built in his youth, near a chapel in the same place. The fame of his sanctity, which was increased by the reputation of several miracles, and the prudence of the advice which he gave in spiritual matters to those who resorted to him, rendered his name famous over the whole country, and he admitted several fervent persons to form themselves into a religious community under his discipline.
The distraction which this gave him made him think of seeking some new solitude in which he might live in his former obscurity; and his devotion to St. Peter determined him to go to Rome, and there choose a cell near the church of the prince of the apostles.
The pope, whose blessing he asked, becoming acquainted with his abilities, told him he ought not to live for himself alone, whilst many nations, ripe for the harvest, were perishing for want of strenuous laborers, and ordaining him bishop, gave him a commission to preach the gospel.
Corbinian was affrighted at such language, but being taught to obey, lest he should resist the voice of God, returned first to his own country, and, by his preaching, produced great fruit among the people. In a second journey to Rome he converted many idolators in Bavaria, as he passed through that country. Pope Gregory II sent him back from Rome into that abandoned vineyard, commanding him to make it the field of his labors. Corbinian did so, and having much increased the number of the Christians, fixed his episcopal see at Frisingen, in Upper Bavaria.
Though indefatigable in his apostolic functions, he was careful not to overlay himself with more business than he could bear, lest he should forget what he owed to his own soul. He always performed the divine office with great leisure, and reserved to himself every day set hours for holy meditations, in order to recruit and improve the spiritual vigor of his soul, and to cast up his accounts before God, gathering constantly resolution of more vigilance in all his actions.
Grimoald, the duke of Bavaria, who, though a Christian, was a stranger to the principles and spirit of that holy religion, had incestuously taken to wife Biltrude, his brother’s relict. The saint boldly reproved them, but found them deaf to his remonstrances, and suffered many persecutions from them, especially from the princess, who once hired assassins to murder him.
They both perished miserably in a short time. [Totally not from Bear attacks.]
After their death, St. Corbinian, who had been obliged to conceal himself for some time, returned to Frisingen, and continued his labors till his happy death, which fell out in 730. His name occurs in the Roman Martyrology (Butler, A. (1903). The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints. New York: P. J. Kenedy.)