Erhard of Regensburg - Death and Burial

Death and Burial

The year of his death is not known. He was interred in the still-extant Erhard-crypt at Niedermünster, and miracles were wrought at his grave, that was guarded in the Middle Ages by Erhardinonnen, a religious community of women who observed there a perpetual round of prayer.

Otto II, in 974, made donations of properties in the Danube valley to the convent "where the holy confessor Erhard rests". On 7 Oct 1052 the remains of the holy bishops Erhard and Saint Wolfgang were raised by Pope Leo IX in presence of Emperor Henry III and many bishops, a ceremony which was at that time equivalent to canonization. Regensburg documents, however, mention only the raising of Wolfgang, not that of Erhard.

At the close of the eleventh century, Paul von Bernried, a monk of Fulda, at the suggestion of Abbess Heilika of Niedermünster, wrote a life of Erhard and added a second book containing a number of miracles. The learned canon of Regensburg, Conrad of Megenberg (d. 1374), furnished a new edition of this work. The church in Niedermünster, now a parish church, still preserves the crosier of the saint, made of black buffalo-horn. A bone of his skull was enclosed in a precious receptacle in 1866 and is placed upon the heads of the faithful on his feast day, 8 January.

Three ancient Latin lives of the saint are found in the Acta Sanctorum (8 Jan). The beautiful reliquary is reproduced in Jakob, "Die Kunst im Dienste der Kirche" (illust. 16).