St. Wolfgang: Playing trick-or-treat with the fiend

October 31 does not receive much attention as a saint’s feast day. The loud and lugubrious observances of Halloween are difficult to compete with. Besides being a night of merry devilry and the eve of All Saints’ Day, October 31 commemorates the feast of a saint who, like ancient Halloween traditions, juggled evil to good purpose. Similarly, as Halloween’s liturgical placement and symbology has been overshadowed by pagan lore and bleak secularism, so has the history of St. Wolfgang of Regensburg has been overshadowed by his story.

St. Wolfgang was born around 934 in Swabia, Germany. A student at the Benedictine Abbey of Reichenau, he took up studies in Würzburg, where he became a teacher at the cathedral school of Trier. His ascetic tendencies prompted him to join an abbey at Einsiedeln, where he was appointed head of the monastery school.

Wolfgang was ordained in 968 by St. Ulrich, who sent him with a party of monks to preach to the Magyars of Hungary, whose resistance to the faith posed a threat to the Catholic Empire. In 972, Emperor Otto II appointed Wolfgang Bishop of Regensburg, where he was renowned for his zeal as a teacher, reformer of monasteries and convents, and almoner.

As his life drew to a close, Wolfgang became a hermit in the Salzkammergut region of Austria. He died in Pupping, Austria, on October 31, 994, and was canonized by Pope St. Leo IX in 1052. What St. Wolfgang is widely known for, however, is a fabled trick he played on the devil when he was living as a hermit near Strobl and Sankt Gilgen town, by Schafberg Mountain and the Lake Abersee, now called the Wolfgangsee.

One day, Wolfgang had a vision of a church which he vowed to build, and taking up an ax to clear land, he marched up Schafberg’s slopes to find a fitting site. Upon reaching the summit, however, he had found no place. Then Wolfgang raised his ax on high and flung the ax down the mountainside, determined to build wherever it fell.

Just as Wolfgang found his ax wedged in an outcrop of ground between the mountain and the lake, he spied a wolf speeding through the woods. And, so the legend goes, Wolfgang called to the beast and asked it to help him with his holy task. But the wolf growled a refusal and bolted away.

Soon after, a hunter dressed in skins appeared in hot pursuit of his wicked quarry. The bishop hailed him down as well, and once more begged for assistance in building a house for God. Like the wolf he pursued, the hunter sneered and resumed the trail.

A rustle through the trees sounding yet again, and Wolfgang’s hair stood on end as he saw the one on who stalked the hunter: it was the Evil One himself, whom folk in those mountain parts call Master Urian. Seeing the bishop, Urian paused and asked what Wolfgang did there in the forest.

Wolfgang fearlessly announced his intentions and, after disparaging the nasty business the demon had at hand, demanded that Master Urian help him instead. The fiend consented on one condition: that the first soul to enter the church would belong to him. Putting his trust in God, Wolfgang agreed on the spot.

To work went Master Urian without another word. With chiseled stone and lumbered wood, the devil built by his trademark: unevenness that is pleasing to the eye. His lines were straight, but strange. North of a noble nave and roof, a crooked passage wound to cloisters tucked behind. Urian raised a squat and square steeple above a wild Romanesque interior and exterior walls white as the snow on Schafberg’s peak, and there it shone on the shore of Lake Abersee.

His vision came to be, Wolfgang argued with Master Urian concerning the price of the soul of the first to enter, but the demon would not budge from their bargain. Wolfgang committed the matter into God’s hands as a hunting horn sounded. Wolfgang seized the great iron ring of the church’s door and flung it open. Out from the woods tore the wolf with the hunter at his heels, and as the brute sped by the church, the door stood open, and it plunged inside.

“This terror of the flock is, nolens volens, thine, though none of Adam’s stock,” Wolfgang pronounced. “A soul I promised thee that in this church first came, so drag this wolfish soul down to thy domain. To each goes as is due. Thou, Urian, still fail to learn thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Thou, Wolf, thy deeds in blood are drenched, but when we met, thou spared no thought to make amends. To God thy tail thou tossed and thus thy soul is damned. Thou, Hunter, man must give, not take, but when to thee I called, thy glory, not thy God’s, thou chose. And for thy pride, thy trophy is denied.”

Master Urian stormed down the nave, seized his howling prey, then grasped the door and slammed it to with such vehemence he snapped the iron ring apart. Once those two had disappeared to the fiery pit, the Hunter hung his head and went his way, leaving Wolfgang alone with his church of Urian’s peculiar design. The steeple still stands with Schafberg’s height and shimmers in the Wolfgangsee in the Salzkammergut lake district of upper Austria. And the broken door ring left by the devil can be seen to this day.

Saintliness is fantastic, and so its portrayal in a species of pious fantasy is fitting. The truth of sanctity is, in many ways, more accessible through wild and wonderful tales that surpass the bounds of truth as we know it, for sanctity is of a higher truth. The stories of saints should offer a heightened element to the lives of saints, allowing them to appear clearly as citizens of two worlds—two worlds that they helped to bring together in Christ.

Familiarity with legends such as St. Wolfgang’s gamble with the devil is growing all too rare in the Catholic imagination. But they should be revived, as the action of legend renders the invisible aspects of sainthood more visible, tangible, and attractive, giving the heroes of the Church a dimension that goes beyond mere history and mere humanity. By exaggerating the extraordinary features of our holy ancestors, holy legends emphasize the very reason why they are saints in a manner that participates in the festive and flamboyant spirit celebrated so widely on October 31.