RUPERT (Hruobert, Ruprecht), Saint. — First Bishop of Salzburg, d. 27 March 718 (?). A monk, Irish or Scottish by birth or at least in education and spiritual formation, he was summoned, in the early years of Childeric III, King of the Franks (691–711), to Ratisbon by Duke Theodo of Bavaria for the conversion of his people. Rupert was bishop at Worms, or at least a chorepiscopus.
Rupert established the first episcopal see on the banks of Wallersee, building a church in honour of St Peter, patron of the cathedral of Worms (the present Seekirchen, Upper Austria); but soon he was given by Theodo a more suitable location on the Salzach, among the ruins of ancient Iuvavum (now Salzburg). Rupert devoted himself energetically to the work of converting and civilising the vast subalpine and alpine regions (as far as the Tauern and the Enns), making the abbey of St Peter (Sankt Peter, in Salzburg) and that of nuns, dedicated to St Mary (Nonnberg), with his niece St Erentrude at its head, centres of irradiation.
The figure and work of the Saint lived on in the veneration of the people; one of his first successors, St Virgil, transferred Rupert’s relics to the new cathedral (24 Sept. 774), which, according to the practice of the time, amounted to a true canonisation. Rupert is patron of the city, diocese and province of Salzburg, greatly venerated also in Bavaria, and patron of the salt mines, the wealth of