Sometimes you know you are not the right person for the job, no matter how ardently they impose upon you to take it. Arnulf knew. They should have listened.
He was an eleventh century Benedictine monk who spent three years holed up in a cell -- virtually no contact with any person. Why they would think he'd make a good bishop is beyond me, unless they had such crooked, self-serving SOBs that they figured this abstemious hermit would be good by comparison.
He tried to run away when they first elected him, but a wolf blocked his path and chased him back to the cathedral. They insisted that he take the job, but he answered, Leave a sinner to offer to God some fruits of penance; and compel not a madman to take upon him a charge which requires so much wisdom." Good argument, but they weren't having it.
Finally, he got chased off his chair by some poser who claimed to be the bishop. Most guys will fight for the right to mitre, just to prevent the bad ones from winning, but not Our Man Arnulf. He flapped his sandals back to the monastery as fast as he could, spending his final years in quiet reflection and prayer.
Arnulf is also the patron of brewers. The legend says that he noticed that beer drinkers were not falling sick during a particularly nasty outbreak of plague, so he brewed up a storm and saved the town (Aldenburg?) in Flanders where he lived. So if you feel like hoisting a frosty, frothy beverage in his honor today, again, who am I to spoil the fun?
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