LULL OF MAINZ, ST.

Missionary, archbishop; b. Wessex, England, c. 710;d. Hersfeld?, Germany, Oct. 16, 786. An Anglo-Saxon like St. boniface, he became a benedictine at malmesbury abbey. He made a pilgrimage to Rome, whence Boniface in 738 took him to Germany. There he became associated in Boniface's missionary efforts. In 751 Lull was sent to Rome, where, having been promised succession to Boniface in the See of Mainz by pepin iii, he was consecrated a chorbishop in 752. When Lull succeeded Boniface as bishop of Mainz in 754, there developed a long dispute between Lull and Abbot St. Sturmi of Fulda. Lull sought—unsuccessfully—to end Fulda's exemption and direct dependence on Rome and to bring it under the jurisdiction of Mainz. He founded the Benedictine monasteries of hersfeld and Bleidenstadt and enlarged the Diocese of Mainz by absorbing the Sees of Erfurt and Buraburg. Lull received the pallium from adrian i c. 781 and was thus the first regular metropolitan of Mainz. He was buried at Hersfeld Abbey.

Feast: Oct. 16.

Bibliography: lambert of hersfeld "Life," Acta Sanctorum, Oct. 7 (1845) 1050–91. Boniface-Lull letters, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Epistolae (Berlin 1826–) 3:215–433. w. levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford 1946) 223–240. t. schieffer, Angelsachsen und Franken (Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur. Geistesund sozialwissenschaftliche Klasse 20.2; Mainz 1950).

[b. d. hill]