EMMERANO, SANTO

SAINT EMMERANUS. — Missionary bishop in Bavaria and at the court of the Bavarian dukes in the 7th or early 8th century. His biographer Aribo, bishop of Fréjus-Singsa (c. 722), states that he was born in Poitiers in Aquitaine and was bishop of his native city. He was certainly a bishop, though perhaps a wandering bishop without a fixed see. According to Aribo, E. left Gaul to preach the Gospel to the Avars in Pannonia, but stopped for three years in Bavaria. Shortly before a journey to Rome, he was barbarously tortured by Lantbert, son of the Bavarian duke Uta, under the false suspicion that he had seduced his sister. He died soon after near the ducal estate of Aschheim, where he was buried in the church of St Peter; after forty days his remains were transferred to Ratisbon in the church of St George, later called St Emmeran’s. From the beginning he was venerated as a martyr. His feast is celebrated on 22 September.