Blessed Frowin was a Benedictine

Benedictine

Benedictine refers to the spirituality and consecrated life in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century for the cenobitic communities he founded in central Italy. The most notable of these is Monte Cassino, the first monastery founded by Benedict...

 abbot. Though never formally beatified, Frowin has commonly been styled "Blessed" by the chroniclers.

Life

Of the early life of Frowin nothing is known, save that he is claimed as a monk of their community by the historians of Einsiedeln Abbey

Einsiedeln Abbey

Einsiedeln Abbey is a Benedictine monastery in the town of Einsiedeln in the Canton of Schwyz, Switzerland. The abbey is dedicated to Our Lady of the Hermits, the title being derived from the circumstances of its foundation, from which the name Einsiedeln is also said to have originated...

 in Switzerland and St. Blasius Abbey in Baden

Baden

Baden is a historical state on the east bank of the Rhine in the southwest of Germany, now the western part of the Baden-Württemberg of Germany....

. The first authentic fact in his career is his election as abbot, the year 1142, to succeed Adelhelm in the newly established monastery of Engelberg in the Canton of Unterwalden, Switzerland.

Through his efforts the possessions and privileges, civil and ecclesiastical, of the abbey were greatly increased, while its renown as a home of learning, art, and piety spread far and wide. He established a famous school in his abbey, in which besides the trivium and quadrivium

Quadrivium

The quadrivium comprised the four subjects, or arts, taught in medieval universities, after teaching the trivium. The word is Latin, meaning "the four ways" , and its use for the 4 subjects has been attributed to Boethius or Cassiodorus in the 6th century...

, philosophy and theology were likewise taught. The library which he collected possessed, for those days, a vast number of maruscripts. According to a list that he left, it contained Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

, Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

, Cato

Cato

-Literature:*Distichs of Cato, or simply Cato, a Latin collection of proverbial wisdom and morality from the 3rd or 4th century AD author Dionysius Cato...

, Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

 and other authors of antiquity. This rich collection perished in 1729, when the abbey was destroyed by fire.

Works

Blessed Frowin not only copied books for his library, but composed several. Two of these, a commentary on the Lord's Prayer, and a treatise in seven books, "De Laude Liberi Arbitrii" ("In Praise of Free Will", but in reality a discussion of the chief theological questions of his day, directed, it is thought, against the errors of Abelard) are still extant, having been discovered by Mabillon in the archives of Einsiedeln. Frowin's other works, Commentaries on the Ten Commandments and various parts of Holy Scripture, are lost.

Veneration

Pétin ("Dictionnaire Hagiographique" I, iiii) gives 7 March as his feast day, and credits him with many miracles.

External links

• Catholic Encyclopedia article