Burchard (d. 754), bishop of Wurzburg. A Wessex man, Burchard was one of many English people who offered their services to Boniface in the evangelization of Germany. Burchard joined him in 732 and became the first diocesan bishop of Wurzburg, in which area the Irish Kilian had worked fifty years before and whose relics he translated to his own cathedral. Burchard was an energetic bishop: he founded both a school and an abbey in his cathedral town. Like Boniface he worked in close concert with the emperors; he led a mission to the papacy in 749 which resulted in a decision about the succession to the Frankish imperial throne favourable to Pepin the Short. He retired from his bishopric c.753 and died some months later at Homburg-on-Main. Feast: 14 October.
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- AA.SS. Oct. VI (1794), 557–94; F. J. Bendel, Vita S. Burkardi (1911); see also Archiv des Hist. Vereins für Unterfranken und Aschaffenburg, xlv. 1–61; lxviii. 377–85
