Question – In paragraph 226 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church there is a prayer attributed to St Nicholas of Flüe. I had never heard of him. Who was he?
SAINT Nicholas of Flüe is undoubtedly little known in most of the world, but he is well known in Switzerland, where he lived and died.
Indeed, he is the patron saint of the country and of the Swiss Guards.
St Nicholas was born in 1417 in Flüeli, near Sachseln, in the Swiss canton of Obwalden.
He was the oldest son of wealthy parents.
In 1439, at the age of 21, he enrolled in the army and fought in the war against the canton of Zurich waged by the rest of the Swiss confederacy, distinguishing himself as a soldier.
He later took up arms again in the so-called Thurgau war against Archduke Sigismund of Austria in 1460.
It was thanks to his influence that a convent of Dominican nuns in Katharinental escaped destruction by the Swiss confederates when many Austrians fled to it after the capture of Diessenhofen.
At around the age of 30, Nicholas married Dorothea Wyss, the daughter of a farmer.
They farmed in the municipality of Flüeli, in the foothills of the Alps, and had ten children.
At the same time he continued to serve in the army until the age of 37, rising to the rank of captain.
According to the tradition, he fought with a sword in one hand and a rosary in the other.
After leaving the army he became a councillor for his canton and then, in 1459, was made a magistrate, serving for nine years in that capacity.
Several times he declined an opportunity to serve as the governor of his canton. He was highly respected in his civic life and service to his country.
After receiving a vision of a horse eating a lily, he was led to understand that the horse pulling a plough in some way symbolised the cares of his worldly life, which were swallowing up his spiritual life, symbolised by the lily, a symbol of purity.
He then decided to devote himself entirely to the contemplative life.
In 1467, at the age of 50, with the consent of his wife and children, he embraced the life of a hermit, living in a little cell near Ranft and giving up any aspirations to political activity.
There he built a chapel with his own funds and engaged a priest to celebrate Mass for him each day.
Nicholas continued to have visions in his prayer and he was renowned for his holiness and wisdom.
He became a spiritual guide to the many civic leaders, powerful personages, as well as simple men and women who sought his advice.
His reputation was such that people from all over Europe went to seek his counsel. To all he was known simply as “Bruder Klaus”, Brother Klaus.
In 1470 Pope Paul II granted the first indulgence to the chapel at Ranft, which became a place of pilgrimage for many, since it lay on the route of the Way of St James to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain.
Through Nicholas’ counsel and success in bringing about the inclusion of Fribourg and Soleure in the Swiss Confederation in 1481, he helped prevent the eruption of a civil war between the rural and urban cantons of the Confederation, who were meeting at the Diet of Stans.
Despite having had little formal education, he is honoured by Protestants and Catholics alike for contributing to permanent national unity in Switzerland.
Letters of thanksgiving to him from Berne and Soleure still survive. For his efforts at Stans he is regarded in Switzerland as one of the earliest champions of arbitration as a method for resolving disputes.
St Nicholas died on March 21, 1487, at the age of 70, surrounded by his wife and children.
He was beatified in 1669, after which the municipality of Sachseln built a church in his honour, where his body was interred.
He was canonised in 1947 by Pope Pius XII.
His feast day is 21 March, except in Switzerland and Germany, where it is 25 September.
As a layman with family responsibilities who took his civic duties seriously, St Nicholas of Flüe is a model of manhood and fatherhood, as well as of involvement in civic life.
