Saints Andrew Zorard and Benedict

Saints Andrew Zorard and Benedict were hermits who lived in the first half of the eleventh century in what was then the Kingdom of Hungary, in present-day Slovakia. The Roman Martyrology says that they came from Poland at the request of King Saint Stephen and led a very austere life in the hermitage of Mount Zobor near Nitra. The Church commemorates them on July 17.

Little is known about Zorard. According to a letter of John Paul II from 1983, he was born in Poland around 980 into a poor peasant family. In Poland he is called Świerad, in Slovakia Svorad, and in Latin sources Zoerardus. A Polish tradition, recorded in the fifteenth century by Jan Długosz, links him with a hermitage at Tropie on the Dunajec River, where he is said to have lived for many years before setting out for Hungary.

In Hungary he entered the Benedictine monastery of Saint Hippolytus on Mount Zobor and took the religious name Andrew. When he was over forty, with the consent of Abbot Philip, he moved to a hermitage that papal texts place at Skalka on the Váh River, near Trenčín. By day he did hard work felling timber, and he spent his nights in prayer, keeping vigil on a tree trunk surrounded by thorns and spikes so as not to fall asleep. During Lent, as has been handed down, he ate one nut a day and often grew faint with hunger. After his death it was discovered that he had worn an iron chain on his body, which had grown deep into his skin.

The year of Andrew’s death is not certain: John Paul II gave it as around 1034, while other studies prefer earlier dates. He was buried in Nitra, in the church of Saint Emmeram, and miracles took place at his tomb, as the sources report. His disciple Benedict moved into the same hermitage after him and led a similar life. Three years after his master’s death he was killed by robbers who were looking for treasure, and they threw his body into the Váh. According to legend, it was found thanks to an eagle that kept watch over the spot. Benedict was buried beside his master, and John Paul II called him a martyr.

The oldest source on the two hermits is a short Life written in the second half of the eleventh century by Maurus, a Benedictine and later bishop of Pécs. As a young pupil of the monastery school he met Zorard, and he also gathered information about him from Benedict and from Abbot Philip.

In 1083 both hermits were recognized as saints. John Paul II recalled that Pope Gregory VII then approved the veneration of Andrew at the request of King Ladislaus of Hungary. In the same year King Stephen and his son Emeric were also proclaimed saints in Hungary. The relics of the two hermits rest in the cathedral of Nitra. They are the principal patrons of the Diocese of Nitra and secondary patrons of the Diocese of Tarnów.