Veneration
Gotthard's successors in the episcopate of Hildesheim, Bertold (1119–30) and Bernhard I (1130–53), pushed for his canonization. This was accomplished during the episcopate of Bernard, in 1131, and it took place at a synod in Rheims. There, Pope Innocent II, in the presence of Bernard and Saint Norbert of Xanten, officially made Gotthard a saint.
On May 4, 1132, Bernard translated Gotthard’s relics from the abbatial church to the cathedral at Hildesheim. On May 5, the first liturgical festivity in honor of Gotthard was celebrated. Miracles were attributed to the relics. Veneration of the saint spread to Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Eastern Europe. Gotthard was invoked against fever, dropsy, childhood sicknesses, hailstones, the pain of childbirth, and gout.
Furthermore, Niederaltaich Abbey made its famous abbot the patron saint of the abbey's well-known grammar school, the St.-Gotthard-Gymnasium.
Gotthard also became the patron saint of traveling merchants, and thus many churches and chapels were dedicated to him in the Alps. His hospice for travellers near Hildesheim (the "Mauritiusstift"), became famous.
According to an ancient Ticinese tradition the little church in St. Gotthard Pass (San Gottardo) in the Swiss Alps was founded by Galdino, Archbishop of Milan (r. 1166-76). Goffredo da Bussero, however, attributes the founding of the church to Enrico di Settala, Bishop of Milan from 1213 to 1230. The hospice was entrusted to the care of the Capuchin Order in 1685 by Federico II Visconti, and later passed under the control of a confraternity of Ticino.
Read more about this topic: Gotthard Of Hildesheim
Famous quotes containing the word veneration:
“It is evident, from their method of propagation, that a couple of cats, in fifty years, would stock a whole kingdom; and if that religious veneration were still paid them, it would, in twenty more, not only be easier in Egypt to find a god than a man, which Petronius says was the case in some parts of Italy; but the gods must at last entirely starve the men, and leave themselves neither priests nor votaries remaining.”
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