GOAR, SAINT: Reputed missionary on the Middle Rhine. According to his biography in the Acta Sanctorum, he came from Aquitaine to the Rhine in the reign of the Frankish King Childebert I.(511-558), and built a cell and a chapel on the site of the later town of St. Goar (on the left bank of the Rhine, 15 m. s. of Coblenz), where he passed his life in spiritual exercises and the entertainment of travelers, and converted not a few pagans. His very hospitality was made a ground of complaint by two clerics from Treves; but he defended himself so impressively before Rusticus, the bishop of that see, that King Sigebert (561-576) desired to make him bishop instead of Rusticus. Goar declined, returned to his cell, and died there seven years later. The legend, which goes back only to the ninth century, has not the slightest historical value. According to a document of Louis the Pious ,dated 820, Pepin and his queen Bertha built a cell over the saint's grave, and Pepin is said to have assigned it to the jurisdiction of Abbot Asuer of Prüm, while Charlemagne, in 788, assigned the cell as a residence for Tassilo of Bavaria. In the eleventh century it was changed into a house of canons, and it continued so till the Reformation.

(A. Hauck.)

Bibliography: The early anonymous life, with commentary, a second life and Miracula are in ASB, July, ii. 327-346; the later life and Miracula are also in MGH, Script., xv (1887), 361-373. Consult: A. Grebel, Geschichte der Stadt St. Goar, St. Goar, 1848; P. Heber, Die vorkarolingischen christlichen Glaubenshelden am Rhein, pp. 130-140; Rettberg, KD, i. 465, 481; Friedrich, KD, ii. 175; DCB, ii. 687-888.