Engelbert (1185–1225)

Biography

Intelligent, brave, skilled and with impeccable manners, he performed with perfection the high positions he had always aspired to. From the age of 14 he promised himself to one day be archbishop of Cologne, the richest of the German dioceses. He achieved it at the age of thirty-two with the support of Pope Innocent II. He governed his flock wisely, forcing the clerics to live as good Christians, preventing the lords from plundering the Church's assets and favoring the apostolate of the new orders, Dominican and Franciscan. In 1220, Frederick II entrusted him with the government of the Cisalpine part of the Empire. Five years later, after arriving in Swelm to consecrate a church there, Engelberto was murdered by one of his cousins, who was a thief of ecclesiastical property and who was not willing to restitute anything. Learning that Engelbero had been stabbed in a forest, the German people, terrified and shaken with pain, awarded him the crown of martyrdom and since then the Roman martyrology has done the same.