Saint Henry II

Saint Henry II was duke of Bavaria, German king and Roman emperor. According to the Roman Martyrology, together with his wife, Saint Cunegund, he strove to renew the life of the Church and to spread the faith, and out of missionary zeal he established several episcopal sees and founded monasteries. The Church commemorates him on July 13, the day of his death.

He was the son of Duke Henry of Bavaria, called the Quarrelsome, and of the Burgundian princess Gisela. He was born on May 6, but the sources differ on the year: 973 or 978 is given. He was educated at the cathedral school in Hildesheim and then in Regensburg under the guidance of Bishop Saint Wolfgang. In 995, after his father’s death, he became duke of Bavaria.

When Emperor Otto III, his kinsman, died without an heir in 1002, Henry claimed the crown, and on June 7 of that year he was anointed and crowned king in Mainz. In 1004 he was crowned king of Italy in Pavia, and on February 14, 1014, Pope Benedict VIII crowned him emperor in Saint Peter’s Basilica. He was convinced that he had received his power from God, and he ruled with a firm hand: he spent many years at war with rebellious nobles and with his neighbors.

He waged three long wars against Bolesław the Brave of Poland. In 1003 he concluded an alliance against him with the pagan Veleti (Lutici), for which he was criticized. At the end of 1008 Saint Bruno of Querfurt, a missionary supported by Bolesław, reproached him in a letter for his alliance with pagans against a Christian ruler and urged him to make peace. The wars were ended only by the Peace of Bautzen in 1018, which left Lusatia and Milsko to Bolesław.

He regarded care for the Church as his duty. In 1007 he brought about the creation of the diocese of Bamberg, endowed it generously and built a cathedral there, consecrated in 1012. In 1020 he received Pope Benedict VIII in Bamberg. He supported the monastic reform that went out from Cluny, and one of his advisers was Abbot Saint Odilo. In 1022, together with Benedict VIII, he presided over the synod of Pavia, which acted against the concubinage of clerics. He also wanted the Creed to be recited at Sunday Mass.

The marriage of Henry and Cunegund remained childless. A later tradition held that the spouses, by mutual consent, lived in chastity, but historians regard this story as a legend. Henry died on July 13, 1024, at the palace of Grona near Göttingen and was buried in the cathedral of Bamberg.

Pope Eugene III canonized him in 1146, and Innocent III canonized Cunegund in 1200. Benedictine oblates venerate Henry as their patron. Benedict XVI, writing in 2006 to the archdiocese of Bamberg for its millennium, called it the diocese of Saint Henry, and Henry and Cunegund the holy imperial couple who founded it.