Piligrim (Pilgrim of Passau, Pilegrinus, Peregrinus) (died 20 May 991) was
Bishop of Passau. Piligrim was ambitious, but also concerned with the
Christianization of
Hungary.
He was educated at the
Benedictine Niederaltaich Abbey, and was made bishop in 971. To him are attributed some, if not all, of the ''
Forgeries of Lorch The Forgeries of Lorch, also known as Lorch Forgeries, is a collection of forged papal bulls completed in the second half of the . It is attributed to the Bishop Pilgrim of Passau in 971 to 991 and contained forged epistles that dealt with the defi ...
''. These are a series of documents, especially
papal bulls of
Pope Symmachus,
Pope Eugene II
Pope Eugene II ( la, Eugenius II; died 27 August 827) was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 6 June 824 to his death. A native of Rome, he was chosen by nobles to succeed Paschal I as pope despite the clergy and the people fav ...
,
Pope Leo VII
Pope Leo VII ( la, Leo VII; died 13 July 939) was the bishop of Rome and nominal ruler of the Papal States from 3 January 936 to his death.
Election
Leo VII's election to the papacy in 936, after the death of Pope John XI, was secured by Albe ...
, and
Pope Agapetus II, fabricated to prove that Passau was a continuation of a former
archdiocese of Lorch. By these he attempted to obtain from
Benedict VI
Pope Benedict VI ( la, Benedictus VI; died June 974) was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 19 January 973 to his death in 974. His brief pontificate occurred in the political context of the establishment of the Holy Roman Emp ...
the elevation of Passau to an archdiocese, the re-erection of those dioceses in
Pannonia
Pannonia (, ) was a province of the Roman Empire bounded on the north and east by the Danube, coterminous westward with Noricum and upper Italy, and southward with Dalmatia and upper Moesia. Pannonia was located in the territory that is now wes ...
and
Mœsia
Moesia (; Latin: ''Moesia''; el, Μοισία, Moisía) was an ancient region and later Roman province situated in the Balkans south of the Danube River, which included most of the territory of modern eastern Serbia, Kosovo, north-eastern Alban ...
which had been
suffragan
A suffragan bishop is a type of bishop in some Christian denominations.
In the Anglican Communion, a suffragan bishop is a bishop who is subordinate to a metropolitan bishop or diocesan bishop (bishop ordinary) and so is not normally jurisdictiona ...
s of Lorch, and the
pallium for himself. There is extant an alleged Bull of Benedict VI granting Piligrim's demands; but this is also the work of Piligrim, possibly a document drawn up for the papal signature, which it never received.
Piligrim converted numerous pagans in Hungary. He built many schools and churches, restored the
Rule of St. Benedict
The ''Rule of Saint Benedict'' ( la, Regula Sancti Benedicti) is a book of precepts written in Latin in 516 by St Benedict of Nursia ( AD 480–550) for monks living communally under the authority of an abbot.
The spirit of Saint Benedict's Ru ...
in Niederaltaich, transferred the relics of
Maximilian of Tebessa from
Altötting to
Passau
Passau (; bar, label=Central Bavarian, Båssa) is a city in Lower Bavaria, Germany, also known as the Dreiflüssestadt ("City of Three Rivers") as the river Danube is joined by the Inn from the south and the Ilz from the north.
Passau's popu ...
,
Saint Maximilian of Celeia
/ref> and held synods (983–991) at (Lorch), Mautern an der Donau, and Mistelbach. In the '' Nibelungenlied'' he is lauded as a contemporary of the heroes of that epic.
References
*Dümmler, Piligrim von Passau und das Erzbisthum Lorch (Leipzig, 1854)
*Berliner Sitzungsberichte (1898), 758-75
*Uhlirz, Die Urkundenfälschung zu Passau im zehnten Jahrhundert in Mittheilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, III (Vienna, 1882), 177-228; IDEM, ibid., supplementary vol., II (1888), 548 sq.
*Heuwieser, Sind die Bischöfe von Passau Nachfolger der Bischöfe von Lorch? in Theologisch-praktische Monats-Schrift, XXI (Passau, 1910), 13-23, 85-90
*Mittermüller, War Bischof Piligrim von Passau ein Urkundenfälscher? in Der Katholik, XLVII (Mainz, 1867), 337-62.
Notes
External links
*
*
{{Authority control
991 deaths
Roman Catholic bishops of Passau
Forgers
Year of birth unknown
10th-century bishops in Bavaria