Christianity’s

Criminal History, 197

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PDFs of entries 1-183 (several of Karlheinz Deschner’s
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St Emmeram or ‘Praising God without tongues’

Emmeram, a rather mysterious bishop and martyr (difficult to say which he was less, if he was both) from the late 7th century, was accused of seducing the pregnant duke’s daughter Uta. In the days of the Bavarian prince Theodo, he was charged with luring the pregnant duke’s daughter Uta and then slain by her brother Lantpert on his way to Rome in Helfendorf (now Kleinhelfendorf, Upper Bavaria). The legend panels of the local chapel of martyrdom have immortalised the ‘event’ in pictures and verse:

O cruelty of torment and agony,
So Emmeram suffered,
His gliders were all and all cut away from the body,
The hands and feet, even the fingers too,
were all chopped off,
Acquires thereby the kingdom of heaven…

When this was, if it was, is completely uncertain and disputed, like almost everything about this figure, his origins, his episcopal office, especially the reasons that led to his murder; perhaps, but this too is quite uncertain, 685. Did the ‘martyr’ fall as a representative of Frankish power in Bavaria, striving for independence? Did he win the palm of martyrdom as the seducer of the duke’s pregnant daughter? Or did he voluntarily take the guilt of seduction upon himself, as the pious version of his first hagiographer, Bishop Arbeo of Freising, implies in his Vita Haimhrammi, but ‘probably only according to the embellishing romantic folk tale’, according to the Catholic Kirchen-Lexikon which adds, moreover, ‘which contradicts his narrative’.

Bishop Arbeo only wrote his opus in 772 and apparently for quite selfish reasons, namely, according to the Catholic Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche in 1931 (which in its latest edition of 1995 no longer mentions the ‘martyr’ at all), ‘primarily in the interest of the places of Emmeram´s veneration in his diocese’. And Bishop Arbeo, from the noble house of the Huosi, who was able to occupy the Freising bishop’s see several times, was a very enterprising prelate who was able to expand the possessions and rights of his diocese. However, almost all popular Catholic portrayals spread a more rather than less gruesome kitsch, as is appropriate for Arbeo’s supernatural exploits. After Uta’s brother has chased after the departed ‘saint’, he dies like a great Christian blood witness. Duke’s son Lantpert has hired ‘five butchers who will chop the haggard man’s corpse to pieces from vein to vein, from limb to limb’. And while he is horribly mutilated, his eyes torn out, noses and ears cut off, hands, feet and the (of course only supposedly) unchaste member, he thanks God ‘with great devotion’ for the marvellous ordeal.

Of course, Emmeram’s veneration as a saint only began decades after his death, but then accompanied by the most beautiful miracles, healings of the sick, and exorcisms of devils, not to mention Arnulf of Carinthia, East Frankish king and emperor of the last punitive miracles (because the Regensburg bishops repeatedly encroached on his ever-growing property. Even serfs were later given to the saint).

The glorious cult, revitalised in the 17th century, spread beyond Bavaria in the early Middle Ages. Under the East Frankish Carolingians, however, Emmeram achieved his greatest importance as a tribal saint, and under Arnulf he became the personal patron of the emperor, helping him in battle against the Moravians. The ruler believed that he alone was to thank for his rescue from mortal danger during the campaign against Swatopluk in 893, which is why he richly endowed the Bavarian monasteries, especially St Emmeram, which received all the jewellery of his palace, and in 899 his body no longer had its place in the Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche 1995: the entire article on the monastery ‘St Emmeram’, which in 1931 was twice as long as the one on the saint himself, has now been omitted.

However, the monks of Emmeram honoured the memory of their benefactor by celebrating a solemn office every year on the anniversary of his death and by making up and forging documents in his name throughout the year, such as the one claiming that he had bequeathed them the entire Neustadt. In the face of all these scams, even ‘the actual patron saint of the monastery, Emmeram, receded into the background for a long time’ (Babl). Nevertheless, he lives on in the Kleinhelfendorf legends and not only there:

Praising God without tongue, power yes wonder.
The godless Rott could no longer live that
he now always praises God,
Thuet cut off his tongue.
But he still praises God,
burdening us with praise for this miracle,
As if the tongue were on the old ear,
Asking nothing of Wüttrich’s raving.