Gohard or Gunhard was a 9th-century

bishop of Nantes The Diocese of Nantes (; ; ) is a Latin Church diocese of the Catholic Church in Nantes, France. The diocese consists of the department of Loire-Atlantique. It has existed since the 4th century. It is now suffragan of the Archdiocese of Rennes, ...

, lord of Blain,

saint In Christianity, Christian belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of sanctification in Christianity, holiness, imitation of God, likeness, or closeness to God in Christianity, God. However, the use of the ...

and

cephalophore A cephalophore (from the Greek for 'head-carrier') is a saint who is generally depicted carrying their severed head. In Christian art, this was usually meant to signify that the subject in question had been martyred by beheading. Depicting the ...

martyr A martyr (, ''mártys'', 'witness' Word stem, stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an external party. In ...

of the

Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

. Gohard was born in

Angers Angers (, , ;) is a city in western France, about southwest of Paris. It is the Prefectures of France, prefecture of the Maine-et-Loire department and was the capital of the province of Duchy of Anjou, Anjou until the French Revolution. The i ...

. It was during his

episcopate A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance and administration of dioceses. The role ...

that the

Battle of Blain The Battle of Blain, also called the Battle of Messac, was fought on 24 May 843 by the forces of Lambert II of Nantes and Erispoe, prince of Brittany, against Renaud, Frankish Count of Nantes. It arose from Breton resistance to Frankish power ...

took place in 843 AD, the first major battle between the

Franks file:Frankish arms.JPG, Aristocratic Frankish burial items from the Merovingian dynasty The Franks ( or ; ; ) were originally a group of Germanic peoples who lived near the Rhine river, Rhine-river military border of Germania Inferior, which wa ...

and the

Britons British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies.: British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, w ...

. Damage caused by struggles between these two factions in the area was compounded by

Viking Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

raids. On the feast day of St.

John the Baptist John the Baptist ( – ) was a Jewish preacher active in the area of the Jordan River in the early first century AD. He is also known as Saint John the Forerunner in Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy, John the Immerser in some Baptist ...

, a month after the defeat of Blain, the

Vikings Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

arrived at Nantes. Gohard was celebrating

Mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

Nantes Cathedral Nantes Cathedral, or the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul of Nantes (), is a Roman Catholic Gothic cathedral located in Nantes, Pays de la Loire, France. Construction began in 1434, on the site of a Romanesque cathedral, and took 457 years ...

before a large audience when the Vikings attacked, killing the priest and his congregation. Legend says that Gohard picked up his severed head and walked down to the

Loire The Loire ( , , ; ; ; ; ) is the longest river in France and the 171st longest in the world. With a length of , it drains , more than a fifth of France's land, while its average discharge is only half that of the Rhône. It rises in the so ...

where a boat took him to Angers. His body was buried in St. Peter's Collegiate Church in Angers, the city where he was born. Gohard was

canonized Canonization is the declaration of a deceased person as an officially recognized saint, specifically, the official act of a Christian communion declaring a person worthy of public veneration and entering their name in the canon catalogue of sa ...

in 1096. The Romanesque

crypt A crypt (from Greek κρύπτη (kryptē) ''wikt:crypta#Latin, crypta'' "Burial vault (tomb), vault") is a stone chamber beneath the floor of a church or other building. It typically contains coffins, Sarcophagus, sarcophagi, or Relic, religiou ...

of Nantes Cathedral is dedicated to him, and was redesigned shortly after his canonization to house relics brought from Angers. A side chapel of the cathedral is also dedicated to him. His

feast day The calendar of saints is the traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as the feast day or feast of said saint. The word "feast" in this context does n ...

is celebrated on 24 June."Saint-Gohard", Nominis
/ref> File:Nantes Cathedral chapel of St. Gohard.jpg , Chapel of St. Gohard in

File:Saint Gohard.jpg , Church of St. Gohard File:Guarbecque (Pas-de-Calais) église Saint-Nicolas PA00108296 buste St.Gohard.JPG, St. Gohard in the church of St. Nicholas

References

{{authority control Bishops in the Carolingian Empire Year of birth unknown Medieval Breton saints

See also

References