Quality of Life

What kind of life could the child possibly look forward to? He was born with a cleft palate, cerebral palsy, and spina bifida. In these progressive days, the child very well might have been aborted after the doctor showed the mother her first detailed fetal ultrasound.

But the child had the great fortune to be born in 1013, a much less progressive time, and into a devout family in Catholic Europe. They named him Hermann.

At the age of seven, his parents placed the boy, who could hardly move, into the Benedictine Abbey of Reichenau.

He professed his monastic vows at the age of 20 in 1033. He was bedridden, and his speech impediment made him nearly impossible to understand.

But here’s the thing. Hermann was a genius. He was a gifted mathematician and astronomer, who built his own astonomical equipment. Although he could barely speak, he could write.

He also wrote a treatise on the science of music, several works on geometry and arithmetics and astronomical treatises (including instructions for the construction of an astrolabe, at the time a very novel device in Western Europe). As a historian, he wrote a detailed chronicle from the birth of Christ to his own present day, for the first time compiling the events of the 1st millennium AD scattered in various chronicles in a single work, ordering them after the reckoning of the Christian era.

(Wikipedia article)

He built musical instruments and wrote music for them. His brother monks chanted the songs he wrote, which rose to sublime poetry.

In fact, Blessed Hermann of Reichenau become the most famous religious poet of his day.

Many of his compositions have become enduring, including most especially Salve Regina and Alma Redemptoris mater, both of which entered the Liturgy through the Divine Office.

He died on 24 September, 1054 at the young age of 41. His feast is celebrated today.

So won’t you sing a Salve Regina to the memory of Blessed Hermann, and ask for his intercession for all the unborn children suffering from birth defects?

or, if you prefer the Goldberg variation…

Or the great Templar version…