Feast day: July 8

St. Kilian

Bishop, Martyr · d. c. 689

Patron of Würzburg

An Irish missionary bishop who with two companions evangelized Franconia in Germany and was murdered for rebuking the local duke over an unlawful marriage.

Kilian was an Irish bishop and missionary of the seventh century, born about 640 of noble family, who left his homeland — as so many Irish monks of that age did — to carry the Gospel to the still-pagan peoples of continental Europe. With a band of companions, among them the priest Colman and the deacon Totnan, he made his way to Franconia, in the heart of Germany.

Settling at Würzburg, he preached to the local Frankish people and won over their duke, Gozbert, who accepted baptism. But Kilian's missionary zeal led him into a fatal collision with the duke's domestic affairs: he told Gozbert that his marriage to Geilana, his brother's widow, was unlawful and must be given up.

Gozbert, moved by conscience, prepared to set the marriage aside. Geilana, enraged, took her revenge: while the duke was away, she had Kilian and his two companions seized and put to death, about the year 689 — the three becoming the protomartyrs of Würzburg.

Their graves became a place of healing and pilgrimage, and half a century later their relics were solemnly enshrined by the first official bishop of Würzburg. Kilian is honoured as the apostle and patron of Würzburg and of Franconia.

Called the 'Apostle of Franconia,' he and his companions were killed for telling a duke his marriage was unlawful — and Würzburg keeps his feast as its great festival.

Image: Lutz.marten at English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/08639a.htm