Winthir

Winthir is a regional blessed, honored in the archdiocese of Munich and Freising, who is said to have lived at Neuhausen, today a district of Munich. No written testimony of his life survives, only popular tradition. He has not been canonized.

Tradition says he came to Neuhausen at the beginning of the 8th century and carried salt with a mule. After work he would speak with the farmers about religion. In old age he lived in a small house and ate vegetables he grew himself. It is also told that during his life there were at Neuhausen neither storms nor cattle plagues. A later tradition makes him the son of a pagan count of Ireland who settled at Neuhausen on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; newer sources place him rather in the 12th century. The name seems Irish-⁠Scottish, but this is not proven.

In 1738 the farmers of Neuhausen wrote that the blessed Winthir had helped them in many illnesses and that Neuhausen was spared in the War of the Spanish Succession, unlike Sendling. Over his grave the Winthir church arose; after a storm brought down part of it in 1931, the skeleton of a tall man together with a tree stump was found under the church in 1932, which agreed with the tradition that he was buried under a linden. The bones have since been regarded as those of the blessed. Beside the church are the Winthir cemetery and a school that bears his name. The day of commemoration is 6 August, and the name day 29 December.