Gunthildis

Gunthildis (Gunthild) of Suffersheim was, according to tradition, a merciful maidservant of Suffersheim, near Treuchtlingen in Bavaria, and she died around 1057. She is honored as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Her name, from Old High German, means the fighting woman.

Nothing sure survives of her life. She is said to have been a pious maidservant, outstanding for almsgiving. The grave with her bones at Suffersheim, now vanished, is held to be historical on the basis of a note by Abbot Dominikus of Plankstetten from 1651. West of the village there was in the Middle Ages a pilgrimage chapel dedicated to her, first attested in writing in 1398, which perished in the time of the Reformation; today beside its foundations, uncovered in 1957, stands a new ecumenical chapel, built between 1993 and 1995. According to another tradition, Gunthildis came from southern England to Germany in the train of Saint Willibald, in the 8th century.

The legend presents her as a cowherd who led a very holy life in her country work, and so she remains an example for the maidservants of the villages. It is said that through her prayer two clear springs burst from the earth, one from a rock, and at this one a leper found healing. To the springs she drove her masters' cattle, which prospered marvelously. From the yield she gave generously to the poor.

She is a local saint of the West; no Orthodox synodal canonization is known, and her life is largely legendary.