Witta of Büraburg, known in his native tongue as Hwita—"the White"—and in Latin as Albuin, Vito Albinus, or Albinus of Büraburg, was born about the year 700 in Wessex among the Anglo-Saxons. Drawn early into the great missionary movement that carried the Gospel from England to the Germanic lands, he became a disciple and close companion of Saint Boniface and a friend of Saint Lullus.
When Boniface, acting as papal legate, organized the Church in central Germany, he established in 741 the missionary bishopric of Büraburg near Fritzlar in northern Hesse. Witta was consecrated its first bishop, at the same time that Burkard was set over Würzburg and Adalar over Erfurt. In 742 Witta and Bishop Burkard assisted Boniface at Sülzenbrücken in Thuringia in the consecration of Willibald, who soon founded the see of Eichstätt. That same April Witta took part in the Concilium Germanicum, the reform synod of the East Frankish bishops convened by the mayor of the palace Carloman and presided over by Boniface; in March 743 he attended the Synod of Estinnes likewise summoned by Carloman.
On 1 April 743 Pope Zacharias confirmed Witta's episcopal consecration, his office, and the boundaries of his diocese, placing them under special apostolic protection. For more than a decade Witta shepherded the fledgling flock amid the labors of conversion and the building of Christian order on the frontier. In 755 Lullus, then archbishop of Mainz, incorporated the sees of Büraburg and Erfurt into his own metropolitan authority so that missionary expansion eastward might remain under unified direction. Witta continued to dwell on the Büraburg until his death after 760.
He was buried in the chapel of Saint Sturm (Sturmius) at Hersfeld; in 769 Lullus used that chapel as the nucleus of the new and influential Benedictine Abbey of Hersfeld. Tradition honors him as a saintly bishop of the Bonifatian mission, and his memory is kept on 26 October.
May Saint Witta obtain for us a share in his missionary fidelity, that we too may serve the Church's growth with steadfast collaboration and pure love of Christ.
