Saint Gebhard of Constance

Gebhard was born in 949 at Bregenz, in what is now Vorarlberg, a son of Count Ulrich, called Uzo, of the counts of Bregenz. ²³ Giampietro Cattini, on santiebeati.it, warns that the date often given, August 7, 949, cannot be taken as certain. ² Medieval tradition says his mother, Dietpurg, died at his birth. ² The Archdiocese of Freiburg says she died just before it, so that he is said to have been delivered by Caesarean section, and that this is why he is invoked for a good delivery. ³

According to the Vita Gebehardi he also lost his father early, and was given into the care of the church of Constance. ² He was taught at the cathedral school there under Bishop Conrad, the future saint; Freiburg calls Conrad his uncle, and says Conrad ordained him a priest. ²³ Cattini says Gebhard carried on Conrad's program of renewal into the next generation. ²

Conrad died in 975, and his successor Gaminolf held the see only a few years. ² By 979 Gebhard, about thirty years old, was Bishop of Constance, appointed under the Emperor Otto II. ²³ Freiburg says he was consecrated in Mainz Cathedral; Cattini says the consecration is traditionally linked with Mainz and Archbishop Willigis, though the record does not allow every detail to be settled. ²³ The 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia lists him as Gebhard II, bishop from 979 to 995. ⁵

Freiburg says he advised the Empress Theophano and was godfather to her son, the future Otto III. ³ Like Conrad, it says, he cared for the strengthening of the faith and the welfare of the needy, and spent his inheritance on church foundations. ³ Cattini adds that tradition remembers his particular care for the poor of the rural and mountain districts of the diocese. ² The Diocese of Feldkirch remembers him as a bishop who worked above all for those in need and who wanted as many people as possible to have access to education. ⁴

In 983 he founded the Benedictine abbey of Petershausen, endowing it with much of his own fortune. ²³⁵ Cattini says the site lay on the right bank of the Rhine, facing the city, in an area under the influence of the abbey of Reichenau, and that he settled there a community from the reforming house of Einsiedeln. ² The church was dedicated to Saint Gregory the Great. ²³

The name, Cattini explains, came from Rome. The new abbey stood across the river from the bishop's city as Saint Peter's stands across the Tiber, and from Petri domus, the house of Peter, came the name Petershausen. ² The church was consecrated on October 28, 992. ²

Freiburg says that on a journey to Rome in 989 he brought back for it a relic of Gregory's head, a gift of Pope John XV. ³ Cattini gives the same journey and gift as the tradition, and separates it from what is well documented, the bond between Petershausen and the cult of Gregory. ² The Martyrology places Petershausen in present-day Switzerland; Freiburg places it in Constance. ¹³

He died at Constance on August 27, 995, after some sixteen years as bishop. ²³ Cattini notes that some later sources give 996, but that 995 is the date most widely held. ² He was buried in the abbey church of Petershausen. ²³ The Martyrology records his deposition there on August 27. ¹

His veneration began immediately after his death, Freiburg says, and the encyclopedia says he began to be honored as a saint soon after it and became patron of the city of Constance. ³⁵ On August 27, 1134, Bishop Ulrich II of Constance raised his remains, which Freiburg says amounted to his canonization. ²³ Cattini records a second elevation in 1259. ² In 1530, in the iconoclastic disorders of the Reformation at Constance, his relics were lost: destroyed, in Freiburg's word, and scattered and thrown into the Rhine, in Cattini's account. ²³

The cult lived on at Bregenz. ² The hill above the town, now the Gebhardsberg, is held by tradition to be where he was born, and pilgrimages to it are recorded from 1670. ²³ In 1723 a chapel was dedicated to him there, on the site of the castle of his birth, and in 1821 an arm relic from the old abbey of Petershausen was placed in the shrine. ²³ For August 27, 2026, the Diocese of Feldkirch announced a festal Mass with Bishop Benno Elbs in the castle courtyard on the Gebhardsberg, and it says pilgrims from the region and from southern Germany keep the tradition of the pilgrimage alive. ⁴

The main narrative source is the Vita Gebehardi, written at Petershausen about a century and a half after his death, alongside the abbey's chronicle. ² Cattini says the distance calls for caution: the Life shows how the monks understood their founder, but not every detail it tells can be taken as history. ² Among its healings is that of a paralyzed man, and Freiburg gives the legend that he cured a lame man with his staff. ²³

What Cattini calls the most solid historical fact is a bishop of the late tenth century busy with the pastoral reorganization of his diocese and, above all, with the founding of Petershausen. ² He is usually shown as a bishop with miter and staff and a model of a church, and Freiburg adds a skull and a papal tiara, for the relic of Gregory. ²³

Saint Gebhard is the patron of the Diocese of Feldkirch, established in 1968, together with Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen, according to Cattini; the diocese itself calls him its patron. ²⁴ The encyclopedia says he became patron of the city of Constance. ⁵ He is invoked against throat ailments and for a safe childbirth; Cattini and Freiburg both link the second to his mother's death at his birth, and the Diocese of Feldkirch says many pilgrims to the Gebhardsberg still bring the request for a good birth. ²³⁴

Saint Gebhard of Constance's feast is August 27, the day of his death, on which the Roman Martyrology enters him. ¹² The Archdiocese of Freiburg keeps that date, and the Diocese of Feldkirch celebrates its patron then. ³⁴ Freiburg adds that the regional calendar for the German-speaking lands, and the dioceses of Rottenburg-Stuttgart and St. Gallen, keep him together with Saint Conrad of Constance on November 26. ³

The story the Church has kept about his birth is a hard one: a mother who died as he was born. ²³ It is the reason pilgrims still climb a hill above Bregenz to ask him for a safe delivery, a thousand years later. ³⁴

He spent his family's wealth on the Church and on the poor, as his teacher Conrad had. ²³ The diocese he now protects remembers him for the needy and for wanting people to be able to learn. ⁴

His abbey was built to face his city across the river, as Saint Peter's faces Rome. ² His relics did not survive the sixteenth century, and his feast is still kept on the hill held to be his birthplace. ²³⁴