Sts. Ewald the Black and Ewald the Fair

Biography

Almost everything known of the two Ewalds comes from St. Bede the Venerable, who wrote about them within a few decades of their deaths. Both were Anglo-Saxon priests who had spent years in Ireland for the sake of study and prayer, part of the great wave of English missionaries to the continent. People distinguished them by their hair: Ewald the Black, whom Bede calls the more learned in Scripture, and Ewald the Fair. In the 690s they traveled to the land of the Old Saxons, in what is now northwestern Germany, hoping to reach the local chief with the Gospel. Bede records that they sang psalms and hymns and offered Mass each day, carrying sacred vessels and a consecrated altar slab with them. The local people, fearing that their chief would abandon their gods, seized the two priests. Ewald the Fair was quickly killed with the sword, while Ewald the Black was tortured before being put to death. Their bodies were thrown into the Rhine. According to Bede, a light appeared over the place where they lay, and the Frankish ruler Pepin had them honorably buried at Cologne, where their relics are still venerated in the Church of St. Kunibert. Bede gives their feast as October 3.

Patronages

Symbols