Saint Ernest (died 1148) was the

abbot Abbot is an ecclesiastical title given to the male head of a monastery in various Western religious traditions, including Christianity. The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not the head of a monastery. The fe ...

of the

Benedictine , image = Medalla San Benito.PNG , caption = Design on the obverse side of the Saint Benedict Medal , abbreviation = OSB , formation = , motto = (English: 'Pray and Work') , found ...

Zwiefalten Abbey at Zwiefalten, Germany from 1141 to 1146. He participated in the

Second Crusade The Second Crusade (1145–1149) was the second major crusade launched from Europe. The Second Crusade was started in response to the fall of the County of Edessa in 1144 to the forces of Zengi. The county had been founded during the First Cru ...

fought by Christians between 1146 and 1149 to defend the

Holy Land The Holy Land; Arabic: or is an area roughly located between the Mediterranean Sea and the Eastern Bank of the Jordan River, traditionally synonymous both with the biblical Land of Israel and with the region of Palestine. The term "Holy ...

following the Turkish atabeg Zengi's capture of the strategically important city of

Edessa Edessa (; grc, Ἔδεσσα, Édessa) was an ancient city (''polis'') in Upper Mesopotamia, founded during the Hellenistic period by King Seleucus I Nicator (), founder of the Seleucid Empire. It later became capital of the Kingdom of Osroe ...

in 1144.

Life

Ernest is a Germanic name meaning severe. Not much is known about Saint Ernest's life. He was born of a noble family in Steisslingen, Germany, and along with his two brothers became important patrons of reformed monasteries in Swabia. How and when Ernst entered the religious life is not clear. A donation to Zwiefalten by the three brothers from 1131 suggests they might have taken monastic vows as early as that time, while the later ''Vita Ernusti'' claims he was a child oblate. Because the Hirsau rule, which Zwiefalten followed, did not permit child oblates, this later tradition is likely invented.

The Crusade

When St. Bernard called for participation in the

to defend the Latin Kingdom and roll back Zengi's advances in Syria, the German king Conrad III, along with many other nobles and churchmen, including Ernest, responded. Ernest attached himself to a contingent of pilgrims and fighters led by the king's brother, bishop

Otto of Freising Otto of Freising ( la, Otto Frisingensis; c. 1114 – 22 September 1158) was a German churchman of the Cistercian order and chronicled at least two texts which carries valuable information on the political history of his own time. He was Otto I ...

. The crusade was not successful. The German armies suffered massive attrition on their march through

Asia Minor Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

and those few who did make it to join the other Crusader forces led by the French king Louis VII in the Holy Land eventually retreated from an ill-considered siege of

Damascus )), is an adjective which means "spacious". , motto = , image_flag = Flag of Damascus.svg , image_seal = Emblem of Damascus.svg , seal_type = Seal , map_caption = , ...

in July 1148 and returned home in ignominy. Otto of Freising's group progressed along the southwestern coastal route across Anatolia from

Ephesus Ephesus (; grc-gre, Ἔφεσος, Éphesos; tr, Efes; may ultimately derive from hit, 𒀀𒉺𒊭, Apaša) was a city in ancient Greece on the coast of Ionia, southwest of present-day Selçuk in İzmir Province, Turkey. It was built in ...

to Laodicia before making for the coast and securing naval passage to

Antioch Antioch on the Orontes (; grc-gre, Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου, ''Antiókheia hē epì Oróntou'', Learned ; also Syrian Antioch) grc-koi, Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου; or Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπ� ...

. They suffered nearly the whole way from severe hunger and other deprivations, including ambushes by Turkish forces in which numerous Christians were taken prisoner or killed.

Martyrdom

St. Ernest himself did not reach Jerusalem. There are no eyewitness or near-contemporary accounts of what happened to him, but a later twelfth-century

hagiography A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies might ...

, the ''Vita S. Ernusti abbatis,'' written at Zwiefalten, describes how he was taken captive by

Saracen upright 1.5, Late 15th-century German woodcut depicting Saracens Saracen ( ) was a term used in the early centuries, both in Greek and Latin writings, to refer to the people who lived in and near what was designated by the Romans as Arabia ...

s in an ambush, and then, along with 40 other Christian prisoners selected for their youth and comeliness, brought to Mecca and presented to the "king of Persia." In the vita's account, the king orders Ernest and the other Christians to venerate his pagan gods, but Ernest steadfastly refuses. Brutally tortured, he is brought once again before the idols and told to worship them. Instead, he stones the idols with rocks, smashing them to pieces. Ernest is then killed by having his viscera drawn out of his navel and wound around a rod. The story contains a number of fanciful elements, but reproduces in particular the popular medieval image of Muslims as idolaters, a myth that Otto of Freising himself went to some lengths to dispel in his chronicle ''On the History of the Two Cities''.John V. Tolan, ''Saracens: Muslims in the Medieval European Imagination'' (Chicago, 2002), 107

References

External links

St. Ernest at Catholic Online

Biography of St. Ernest in Spanish
* http://www.santiebeati.it/dettaglio/76400 {{DEFAULTSORT:Ernest, Saint German Roman Catholic saints 1148 deaths German Benedictines Benedictine abbots Year of birth unknown Christians of the Second Crusade