Gunter

Who they were

Ven. Gunthar, bishop of Regensburg, had been a monk of St. Emmeram’s in that city. The see of Regensburg was vacant and emperor Otto I resolved to appoint the first ecclesiastic he should meet in the morning to fill that see. It happened that the first to meet him was the monk Gunthar, who opened the door of St. Emmeram’s to admit the monarch to the church. Otto asked the monk what he would give if he were made bishop. Gunthar smilingly said: "My shoes." When the election was to take place, the emperor related the incident and the monk Gunthar was chosen to fill the vacancy. Six months after assuming the burden of the episcopate, he lay on his deathbed; he caused himself to be laid upon the floor and to be bestrewn with ashes while he said with patient Job: "With hearing of the ear, I have heard thee, but now my eye seeth thee; therefore I reprehend myself and to penance in dust and ashes." (Job XII, 5-6). Weeping tears of compunction he died in 938.

The miracles

There was never a formal cause: he has been honoured as a saint since before the Church's formal processes began.

Why that counted as sanctity

A Benedictine Martyrology (1922) remembers him on 31 December.