It was not disputed that a group of men tracked down and viciously murdered a priest and bishop named Emmeran. Butler spares no pains in describing the manner of Emmeran’s death:

A troop of assassins . . . pursued the holy man, and having overtaken him when he was advanced three days on his journey, they massacred him in the most inhuman manner, by cutting off his fingers, then his hands, ears, nose, legs, and arms. They left him a maimed trunk, weltering in his blood, and in that condition he died with incredible tranquility of soul and patience in the year 653.

What happened to Emmeran was horrifying.

Butler also states the reason these men hunted and slaughtered Emmeran: They were “stirred up by the clamours and slanders of a wicked woman” which means that a woman that these men believed levied charges that Emmeran had taken (likely sexual) advantage of her.

Butler, taking the Church’s line that he was a holy, self-sacrificing priest, declares that the woman was herself slandering Emmeran and, for speaking out against him and refusing to shut up (this being the “clamours” part), brands her as wicked.

What is most certainly curious is that neither the saint nor the assassins are described as “wicked”–only the woman. The assumption is that the woman was a liar, that a group of men stupidly believed her and engaged in a misguided effort to persecute an innocent man to avenge this wicked woman’s honor, and eviscerated the man whose public record was, in the Church’s opinion and subsequent histories, irreproachable–after all, Emmeran had devoted himself to making Germanic people change their religious practices!

Was Emmeran innocent? Was the woman speaking the truth? We don’t know…and we don’t know in large part because of the mob mentality and acts of those who felt they were “doing the right thing” in hunting down and then murdering Emmeran, piece by piece. Their actions did not serve justice, did not elicit truth, and left one man dead and one woman branded wicked.