Daily Martyrology for May 4

At Engelberg, in Switzerland, in 1126, Blesseds Conrad, Adelhelm, Frowin and Berchtold. Conrad of Seldenbüren founded the abbey of Engelberg about 1120 and [then] entered the community. When he went to Zurich to settle a claim on some property he had given to the abbey, he was murdered. His body was incorrupt until it burned in a fire in 1729. Engelberg was first settled by monks from Muri, led by Blessed Adelhelm. After the community suffered under the rule of three unworthy abbots, Blessed Frowin was sent from St. Blasien in the the mid-1140s to revitalize the monastery. Like St. Blasien, Engelberg was a double monastery. It continued to be one until the early sixteenth century, when the sisters moved to Sarnen. Frowin was a very well-read man and established a renowned scriptorium and library at Engelberg. He wrote a compendium on theological anthropology called In Praise of Free Will and A Commentary on the Our Father. His immediate successor, Berchtold, continued his work and left behind a theological treatise.

At Lorch, in Austria, in 304, during the persecution of Diocletian, St. Florian. He surrendered to the governor’s soldiers and was scourged, flayed, and thrown into the river Emms with a stone around his neck. He is venerated as the patron of firefighters.

In Poland, in 1505, Blessed Ladislas of Warsaw. He was educated in Warsaw and joined the Observant Franciscans. He was sent on an evangelizing mission to Lithuania. He organized a campaign of prayer to protect Poland from an invasion of Tatars and Turks, whose advance was then stopped by extraordinary floods.

In 1793, Blessed John Martin Moye. He served as a parish priest in the area around Metz, where he founded the Sisters of Divine Providence, and then in Macao for twelve years, where he founded another congregation. He died in France of typhoid fever.

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Our daily martyrology was written by Fr. Hugh Feiss, OSB. Copyright © 2008 by the Monastery of the Ascension, Jerome, ID 83338.