High altarpiece depicting St. Emmeram, painted in 1774 by Franz Xaver König
Saint Emmeram of Regensburg (also Emeram(m)us, Emmeran, Emmerano, Emeran, Heimrammi, Haimeran, or Heimeran) was a Christian bishop and a martyr born in Poitiers, Aquitaine. Having heard of idolatry in Bavaria, Emmeram travelled to Ratisbon (Regensburg) some time after the year 649 to the court of Theodo I, Duke of Bavaria. He supposedly travelled up the Loire, crossed through the Black Forest and then followed the Danube to Regensburg. Theodo welcomed Emmeram to his court, where he laboured for three years carrying out missionary work. During this time, he gained a reputation as a pious man. He died circa 652 and is buried in St. Emmeram's in Regensburg, Germany. His feast day in the CatholicCalendar of saints is September 22.
Arbeo of Freising wrote a biography of Emmeram in 750, the Vita Sancti Emmerami, about 100 years after the saint's death. The literature tells the story of Emmeram, born to a noble family in Aquitaine. According to Alban Butler and others, he became Bishop of Poitiers, although this cannot be verified.[1][2] There is speculation that he held the office briefly between the death of Dido and the accession of Ansoaldus.
Having heard of idolatry in Bavaria, he decided to travel to Ratisbon (Regensburg) some time after the year 649 to the court of Agilofing, Theodo I, Duke of Bavaria. He supposedly travelled up the Loire, crossed through the Black Forest and then followed the Danube to Regensburg. Theodo welcomed Emmeram to his court, where he laboured for three years carrying out missionary work. During this time, he gained a reputation as a pious man. He founded the monastery that later bore his name.[3]
He then went on a pilgrimage to Rome, but after a five days' journey, at a place now called Kleinhelfendorf, south of Munich, he was set upon by the Duke's son Lantpert of Bavaria, who tortured him cruelly. He died shortly afterwards at Aschheim, about fifteen miles distant. The cause of this attack and the circumstances attending his death are not known.[1]
Legend
As the story goes, Uta (or Ota), the daughter of the duke, confided to Emmeram that she was expecting a child out of wedlock. According to Arbeo, the father was one Sigipaldus from her father's own court. Moved with compassion, Emmeram advised her to name himself, whom everyone respected, as the father hoping to mitigate some of her shame.[1] Shortly thereafter, the legend goes, Emmeram abruptly went on a pilgrimage to Rome. At this point, Uta named Emmeram as the father.
When Duke Theodo and his son Lantpert learned of Uta's pregnancy, Lantpert went after the bishop. Lantpert caught up with Emmeram in Helfendorf (now part of the Munich suburb of Aying) on the old Roman road between Salzburg and Augsburg on the Via Julia Augusta and greeted him as "bishop and brother-in-law". According to popular tradition, wanting to protect the real culprit, Emmeram did not defend himself, and received numerous wounds.[4] Lantpert and his followers tied Emmeram to a ladder and proceeded to torture him; he was then beheaded.
His companions, Vitalis and Wolflete, found him still alive, lying in his own blood, and tried to bring him quickly back to Aschheim,[4] where a walled church of Apostle Peter stood.
The improbability of the tale, the details of the saint's martyrdom, which are certainly untrue, and the fantastic account of the prodigies attending his death show that the writer, infected by the pious mania of his time, simply added to the facts imaginary details supposed to redound to the glory of the martyr.[1]
Veneration
The Martyrdom of Saint Emmeram (Salzburg), from the Cathedral Treasury and Diocese Museum, Eichstätt
A text printed in Munich in 1743, Officium oder Tageszeiten des wunderthätigen Bayerischen Apostels und Blutzeugen Christi St. Emmerami, zu täglichen und andächtigen Gebrauch in allen Anliegen und Widerwärtigkeiten etc., states that the cart was accompanied by
men and women of two hundred persons with great sympathy and prayer. A half hour before reaching Aschheim, the saint called for a halt, as within the hour his reward of heaven was before him. Then it happened that they lifted him down from the cart and laid him upon a beautiful sward, where he gave up his ghost at once. ...The place where this happened remained fresh and green for all time until finally the alms of travelers (because all four roads come together there) and other good-hearted Christians had a church built, where even today many wonders still occur!
Arbeo of Freising depicted the place of his death as a "lovely, ever spring-green place, upon which a spring appeared and the local people later built a little church."
When the misunderstanding of Emmeram's relationship to Uta was revealed, he was entombed in Aschheim, whereupon legend states that it rained for forty days. Emmeram was exhumed and put upon a raft in the Isar. When the raft reached the Danube, it miraculously floated upstream to Regensburg, where Emmeram was interred in the church of St. George.[4](A somewhat similar tale is told of Lubentius of Dietkirchen.)[5]
His remains were later moved to a church dedicated to the martyr. This church burned down in 1642. Emmeram's bones were found under the altar in 1645 and moved to St. Emmeram's Abbey. The church, now a basilica minor, houses his leg bones in a silverreliquary in the eastern portion under the altar.[1][6]
At the spot Saint Emmeram died in the year 652, a small chapel was erected in the year 1842. The church of St. Lorenz in Oberföhring has a side altar dedicated to St. Emmeram. In the church of Saints Peter and Paul in Aschheim, a plaque memorializes the first grave of Emmeram with an inscription.
The day of his martyrdom is also his feast day, 22 September.
Regensburg is a city in eastern Bavaria, at the confluence of the Danube, Naab and Regen rivers, Danube's northernmost point. It is the capital of the Upper Palatinate subregion of the state. With more than 150,000 inhabitants, Regensburg is the fourth-largest city in the State of Bavaria after Munich, Nuremberg and Augsburg and the 8th largest of all cities on the Danube river. From its foundation as an imperial Roman river fort, the city has been the political, economic and cultural centre of the surrounding region. Later, under the rule of the Holy Roman Empire, it housed the Perpetual Diet of Regensburg.
The Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg was an ecclesiastical principality and state of the Holy Roman Empire. It comprised the secular territory ruled by the archbishops of Salzburg, as distinguished from the much larger Catholic diocese founded in 739 by Saint Boniface in the German stem duchy of Bavaria. The capital of the archbishopric was Salzburg, the former Roman city of Iuvavum.
Wolfgang of Regensburg was bishop of Regensburg in Bavaria from Christmas 972 until his death. He is a saint in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. He is regarded as one of the three great German saints of the 10th century, the other two being Ulrich of Augsburg and Conrad of Constance. Towards the end of his life Wolfgang withdrew as a hermit to a solitary spot, in the Salzkammergut region of Upper Austria. Soon after Wolfgang's death many churches chose him as their patron saint, and various towns were named after him.
Arnulf II, also known as the Bad, the Evil or the Wicked, a member of the Luitpolding dynasty, held the title of Duke of Bavaria from about 907 until his death in 937. He is numbered in succession to Arnulf of Carinthia, counted as Arnulf I.
St. Emmeram's Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral located in Nitra, Slovakia. The entire cathedral is housed in the Nitra Castle precinct, much like Prague Castle.
September 21 - Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar - September 23
Rupert of Salzburg was Bishop of Worms as well as the first Bishop of Salzburg and abbot of St. Peter's Abbey in Salzburg. He was a contemporary of the Frankish king Childebert III. Rupert is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Rupert is also patron saint of the Austrian state of Salzburg.
The Agilolfings were a noble family that ruled the Duchy of Bavaria on behalf of their Merovingian suzerains from about 550 until 788. A cadet branch of the Agilolfings also ruled the Kingdom of the Lombards intermittently from 616 to 712. They are mentioned as the leading dynasty in the Lex Baiuvariorum. Their Bavarian residence was at Regensburg.
Otloh of St Emmeram was a Benedictine monk, composer, writer and music theorist of St Emmeram's in Regensburg.
Saint Emmeram's Abbey was a Benedictine monastery founded around 739 at Regensburg in Bavaria at the grave of the itinerant Frankish bishop Saint Emmeram. The original abbey church is now a parish church named St. Emmeram's Basilica. The other buildings on the site form a large complex known as Schloss Thurn und Taxis or Schloss St. Emmeram, which has served as the main residence of the Thurn und Taxis princely family since the early 19th century.
Ulrich of Zell, also known as Wulderic, sometimes of Cluny or of Regensburg, was a Cluniac reformer of Germany, abbot, founder and saint.
January 7 - Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar - January 9
Lantpert was the son of Theodo, duke of Bavaria, and Gleisnot of Friuli.
Gebhard I, known as Gebhard of Swabia, was the Bishop of Regensburg from 994 until his death.
Theodo, also known as Theodo V and Theodo II, was the Duke of Bavaria from 670 or, more probably, 680 to his death. It is with Theodo that the well-sourced history of Bavaria begins. He strengthened his duchy internally and externally and, according to the medieval chronicler Arbeo of Freising, he was a prince of great power whose fame extended beyond his borders.
Saint Erhard of Regensburg was bishop of Regensburg in the 7th century. He is identified with an Abbot Erhard of Ebersheimmunster mentioned in a Merovingian diploma of 684. Ancient documents call him also Erard and Herhard.
The Margraviate of the Nordgau or Bavarian Nordgau was a medieval administrative unit (Gau) on the frontier of the German Duchy of Bavaria. It comprised the region north of the Danube and Regensburg (Ratisbon), roughly covered by the modern Upper Palatinate stretching up to the river Main and, especially after 1061, into the Egerland on the border with Bohemia.
Frobenius Forster was a German Benedictine, Prince-Abbot of St. Emmeram.
Regensburg also called Ratisbon in English and Ratisbonne in French, a German city in Bavaria, south-east Germany
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