Feast Day: March 25 Canonized: Pre-Congregation — cultus confirmed; feast in Swiss and German martyrologies Order / Vocation: Order of Saint Benedict — Benedictine monk at Allerheiligen (All Saints), Schaffhausen; married nobleman; pilgrim; co-founder of the monastery of Allerheiligen Patron of: Penitent nobles · Those who leave wealth for the monastic life · Schaffhausen
The Count of the Rhine Who Founded a Monastery and Then Entered It
Everard of Nellenburg — Count of Nellenburg, a wealthy nobleman of the Swabian Rhine, in what is now the canton of Schaffhausen in Switzerland — lived the life of the high medieval Christian layman at its most elevated level, and then changed it entirely.
He was married. He made pilgrimages — to Jerusalem and to Rome, the two supreme pilgrimage destinations of the medieval Catholic world, each requiring weeks of travel through dangerous territory and representing a serious spiritual commitment. He founded the Benedictine monastery of Allerheiligen — All Saints — at Schaffhausen around 1049, endowing it richly from his own considerable resources. He was, by every measure, a generous and pious layman of the eleventh century.
Then he entered the monastery he had founded. He became a monk, moving from the position of founder-patron to the position of the lowest novice, subject to the Rule he had built a house to observe. He died as a monk in 1078, approximately thirty years after the monastery's foundation. His wife, who had supported the foundation, had preceded him in religion — she too entered the contemplative life.
The Benedictine monastery of Allerheiligen at Schaffhausen became one of the significant religious houses of medieval Swabia, and its founder is venerated there as a blessed. The Swiss Catholic tradition preserves his feast on March 25.
Prayer to Blessed Everard of Nellenburg
O God, who in Blessed Everard gave the Church a nobleman who founded a monastery and then entered it, who made the pilgrimage and then made the vow, who spent his wealth on a house of prayer and then spent himself in it, grant through his intercession that those who support the Church with their resources may also give themselves, and that the patron who becomes the monk may show the world that the gift of self is always greater than the gift of money. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Blessed Everard of Nellenburg, pray for us.
| Born | c. 1048 — Swabia (present-day Germany/Switzerland) |
| Died | 1078 — Allerheiligen Monastery, Schaffhausen, Switzerland — natural death as a monk |
| Feast Day | March 25 |
| Order / Vocation | Order of Saint Benedict — Benedictine monk; co-founder of Allerheiligen Monastery; count |
| Canonized | Pre-Congregation — cultus confirmed; Swiss martyrologies |
| Patron of | Penitent nobles · Those who leave wealth · Schaffhausen |
| Known as | Everard I of Nellenburg · Eberhard von Nellenburg |
| Foundations | Allerheiligen Monastery, Schaffhausen (co-founded c. 1049) |
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