Anselm, Duke of Friuli

Saint Anselm of Friuli, O.S.B., (died 805) was a medieval abbot, and later canonized, originally a Lombard nobleman. He was the first abbot of Nonantola.

Anselm was the Duke of Forum Julii (modern Friuli) in the northeast of Lombard Italy after Aistulf succeeded to the throne of the Lombards. He left the world at the height of his secular career, and, in 750, built a monastery at Fanano, a place given to him by Aistulf, who had married Anselm's sister Gisaltruda. Two years later he built a monastery at Nonantola, a short distance northeast of Modena, which Aistulf endowed. Anselm then went to Rome, where Pope Stephen II invested him with the religious habit of the Benedictine Order, gave him some relics of St. Sylvester and appointed him Abbot of Nonantola. Anselm founded many hospices where the poor and the sick were sheltered and cared for by monks.

Desiderius, who succeeded Aistulf as King of the Lombards in 756, banished Anselm from Nonantula in favor of his own protegé. Anselm spent the seven years of his exile at the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino, but returned to Nonantola after Desiderius was taken prisoner by Charlemagne in 774. Until 1083, Nonantola was an imperial monastery, and after Anselm's time its discipline often suffered from imperial interference in the election of its abbots.

Having been abbot for fifty years, Anselm died at Nonantola in 805, where the commune still honors him as its patron saint. His feast day is March 3rd.

Sources

• Paul the Deacon. Historia Langobardorum.