Heimerad

Saint Heimerad (also known as Heimrad, Haimrad or Heimo) was born around 970 at Meßkirch near Lake Constance, in Baden in Germany, and reposed on 28 June 1019 on the Hasunger Berg (now Burghasungen) near Kassel. He was a priest and travelling preacher, venerated in the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church, with the title of fool for Christ. Born of unfree parents, he made pilgrimages in Germany, Italy and Palestine. After his return to Germany he became a monk at Hersfeld Abbey but was expelled after a dispute about wearing the order's clothing, and he was not accepted at Paderborn. Because of his unusual way of life he was driven from several places, and became more and more alone.

At length he found a site for a hermitage on the Hasunger Berg. At first mocked and scorned even there, with time he came to be revered as a saint and his advice was sought by the great: he was acquainted with the Empress Kunigunde, Bishop Meinwerk of Paderborn and Aribo, archbishop of Mainz. Aribo had a church built over his grave in 1021, which became the nucleus of Hasungen Abbey, founded in 1074. Pilgrimages to his grave reached their high point in the second half of the eleventh century, when Hasungen was the most visited place of pilgrimage in Germany after the grave of Sebaldus in Nuremberg. Veneration of him fell off greatly after the dissolution of the abbey in the sixteenth century. His life was written by the monk Ekkebert of Hersfeld between 1072 and 1090. He is commemorated on 28 June, as a saint of the West before the Great Schism (a saint of the undivided Church), by the New Calendar.