St. Gunther of Bohemia 13966

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Gunther was born in around 955 to a noble family, related to the Royal Otto Family as well as with the Hungarian Arpades. He was a Duke of Thuringia, and is numbered among the ancestors of the princely house of Schwarzburg. He spent the early part of his life at court in the midst of worldly pleasures and ambitious intrigues.

In 1008, he withdrew to a wild, steep place near Lalling, to live as a hermit. In 1011, he penetrated farther north in the forest with several companions and settled at Rinchnach, where he built cells and a church of St. John Baptist. Here he lived for thirty-four years a life of the greatest poverty and mortification. The very water was measured out to the brothers, guests alone being free to use at as they would.

It is said that Gunther received the gift of infused knowledge and became a powerful preacher though deficient in ordinary ecclesiastical learning: he could probably neither read nor write. Wolfher, his biographer, relates that he knew him intimately, and often heard his admirable sermons on his patron, St John the Baptist—sermons which drew tears from all who heard them.

Gunther died at about the age of ninety in Hartmanice, Bohemia, on 9 October 1045, in the arms of Duke Bretislaus and of the Bishop of Prague. He was buried in Brevnov Monastery but his remains were destroyed by the Hussites in 1420.