CONRAD BOSINLOTHER, BL.

Abbot and reformer; b. Trier, Germany; d. Oberwang, near Mondsee, Austria, Jan. 15, 1145. A benedictine monk of the Abbey of Siegburg, he so impressed Abbot Conrad (d. 1132) that the abbot, when he became bishop of Regensburg in 1126, chose him to reform the small episcopal Abbey of Mondsee. Conrad was successful in this undertaking, and to preserve his work he placed the abbey, with the bishop's permission, directly under the Holy See. He was determined to maintain the abbey's rights and thus aroused the hatred of some of its tithe payers, who set on him as he returned from a service at Oberwang and clubbed him to death. The murderers tried to burn his body, but, according to reports, it was miraculously preserved. His gravestone depicted him with au reole and martyr's palm, and his grave became a place of pilgrimage. Although his body was solemnly raised in 1682 and placed behind the high altar at Mondsee and a plenary indulgence was attached to his veneration by Pope benedict xiv in 1745, his cult is almost extinct today.

Feast: Jan. 15 or 16.

Bibliography: Chronicon Lunaelacense (Munich 1748) 117–125, 401–418. a. m. zimmermann, Kalendarium Benedictinum: Die Heiligen und Seligen des Benediktinerorderns und seiner Zweige, 4 v. (Metten 1933–38) 1:87, 89–90. v. redlich, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner, 10 v. (2d, new ed. Freiburg 1957–65) 6:462. m. patsch, "Der selige Konrad Bosinlother, Abt von Mondsee," Historisch-politische Blätter für das katholische Deutschland 159 (1917) 534–548.

[j. l. grass]