medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Godehard (also Gotthard) was born in the vicinity of what at the time was the canonry of St. Maurice at today's Niederalteich (Lkr. Deggendorf) in Bavaria. After schooling there he spent three years of administrative training at the archdiocesan court in Salzburg, travelled to Italy, came back, continued his studies at the cathedral school of Passau, and then returned to Niederaltaich (this older spelling is still conventional for the canonry / monastery) where he swiftly became provost. When that house was subsequently transformed into a Benedictine abbey Godehard stayed on as a novice. He made his monastic profession in 990, was ordained priest in 993, and in 996 was elected abbot.
As abbot, Godehard steered Niederaltaich in the direction of Cluniac reform and also established there a school to train scribes and illuminators. Upon the nomination of the future emperor St. Henry II, he reformed Tegernsee in 1001-1002 and Hersfeld from 1005 until his return to Niederaltaich in 1013, when he began work on rebuilding that abbey and its church. In 1022 he was named bishop of Hildesheim in today's Lower Saxony, succeeding bishop St. Bernward. As bishop he completed Bernward's abbey church of St. Michael the Archangel in Hildesheim and founded some thirty churches in his diocese as a whole. Godehard died in 1038 after a brief illness. The first form of his Vita by Wolfher (BHL 3581) seems to have been completed shortly after his death; the revised version (BHL 3582) was written between 1054 and 1061. Godehard was canonized by Innocent II in 1131. On 4. May 1132 his body was translated from the abbey church to the cathedral and on the following day his liturgical feast was celebrated for the first time. Miracles occurring at that event laid the foundation of what became his ongoing reputation as a healing saint. His cult spread widely in German-speaking regions and in alpine and subalpine areas of Italy, Slovenia, and Hungary. St. Gotthard pass takes its name from a hospice erected there in the thirteenth century.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Godehard (Gotthard):
a) as portrayed in relief (at center; grayscale view) on his earlier twelfth-century shrine (ca. 1140) usually kept in Hildesheim's rebuilt Domkirche St. Mariä Himmelfahrt (in recent years it's been elsewhere, undergoing scientific analysis and restoration):
http://www.inschriften.net/typo3temp/pics/di-58_040_1_d2982fc6a4.jpg
Detail view (color):
http://tinyurl.com/zngne4r
The shrine on display in the crypt:
http://tinyurl.com/z27wtod
The shrine emptied of its contents in 2010:
http://tinyurl.com/gtl3eqg
b) as portrayed in relief (at right, flanking Christ; at left, St. Epiphanius of Pavia) in the tympanum of the northwest portal of Hildesheim's twelfth-century Basilika St. Godehard (begun, 1133; consecrated, 1172):
http://tinyurl.com/haghjjr
The portal as a whole:
http://tinyurl.com/jvc5svv
c) as portrayed in a late thirteenth-century statue at the northwest portal of Hildesheim's Domkirche St. Mariä Himmelfahrt:
http://tinyurl.com/zcrels5
d) as depicted in a fourteenth-century fresco in the chiesa di San Tommaso di Canterbury in Corenno Plinio, a _frazione_ of Dervio (LC) in Lombardy:
http://tinyurl.com/gm4b5s7
e) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Lucy) in a fourteenth-century fresco in the crypt of Treviso's cattedrale di San Pietro Apostolo:
http://tinyurl.com/h795pn7
f) as portrayed in a mid-fourteenth-century statue (ca. 1350) in the St. Nikolaikirche in Quedlinburg:
http://tinyurl.com/z6rch94
g) as depicted in a later fourteenth-century fresco in the chiesa di Santa Maria del Tiglio in Gravedona (CO) IN Lombardy:
http://tinyurl.com/hndpwc3
h) as portrayed in an earlier fifteenth-century wooden statue in the Kirche St. Godehard in Kessin (Lkr. Rostock) in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern:
http://tinyurl.com/hnwkroe
i) as portrayed in a mid-fifteenth-century statue (ca. 1450) in Hildesheim's Basilika St. Godehard:
http://tinyurl.com/hvp8qzw
The object in Godehard's left hand represents Hildesheim's reliquary of the Virgin Mary, on which see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildesheim_Reliquary_of_Mary
j) as depicted (at left; at right, St. Mary Magdalene) by Giovanni and Luca de Campo in the later fifteenth-century frescoes (1463) of the oratorio di San Bernardo at Briona (NO) in Piedmont:
http://tinyurl.com/qdr3hhq
k) as portrayed in relief in the later fifteenth-century choir stalls (1466) of Hildesheim's Basilika St. Godehard:
http://tinyurl.com/jt4vzg8
Best,
John Dillon
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