Saint Ernest

Saint Ernest
Ernest in a stained glass window of the Church of St Peter and Paul, Épernay
Abbot of the abbey of Zwiefalten
Died	1148 AD Mecca
Venerated in	Roman Catholicism
Major shrine	Zwiefalten Abbey
Feast	November 7

Saint Ernest (died 1148) was the abbot of the Benedictine Zwiefalten Abbey at Zwiefalten, Germany from 1141 to 1146. He participated in the Second Crusade fought by Christians between 1146 and 1149 to defend the Holy Land following the Turkish atabeg Zengi's capture of the strategically important city of Edessa in 1144.

Ernest is a Germanic name meaning severe. Not much is known about Saint Ernest's life. He was born of a noble family in Steisslingen, Germany, and along with his two brothers became important patrons of reformed monasteries in Swabia. How and when Ernst entered the religious life is not clear. A donation to Zwiefalten by the three brothers from 1131 suggests they might have taken monastic vows as early as that time, while the later Vita Ernusti claims he was a child oblate. Because the Hirsau rule, which Zwiefalten followed, did not permit child oblates, this later tradition is likely invented.

When St. Bernard called for participation in the Second Crusade to defend the Latin Kingdom and roll back Zengi's advances in Syria, the German king Conrad III, along with many other nobles and churchmen, including Ernest, responded. Ernest attached himself to a contingent of pilgrims and fighters led by the king's brother, bishop Otto of Freising. The crusade was not successful. The German armies suffered massive attrition on their march through Asia Minor and those few who did make it to join the other Crusader forces led by the French king Louis VII in the Holy Land eventually retreated from an ill-considered siege of Damascus in July 1148 and returned home in ignominy. Otto of Freising's group progressed along the southwestern coastal route across Anatolia from Ephesus to Laodicia before making for the coast and securing naval passage to Antioch. They suffered nearly the whole way from severe hunger and other deprivations, including ambushes by Turkish forces in which numerous Christians were taken prisoner or killed.