Gangulphus was a Burgundian courtier whose historical existence can only be attested by a single document: a deed from the court of Pepin the Short dated 762.
As a youth, Gangulphus was known for his great honesty, chastity, and propriety, and visited churches and read religious texts, avoiding the company of libertines.
When his parents died, he became a model landowner, taking care of the household economy with ease and industry and also providing for the churches and the poor on his land.
On a journey back to Burgundy, he found a property at Bassigny upon which stood a fountain that issued fresh and good water.
Gangulphus was fairly lenient: he forbade his wife from ever sharing his marriage bed and also ordered the priest to go abroad.
[4] Gangulphus' relics were translated to Varennes-sur-Amance in the diocese of Langres, where his cult developed, and later distributed to various places in France, Germany, the Low Countries and Switzerland.
On the Milseburg, in the Rhön Mountains, rises a Gangolfkapelle, as well as at Wolpertswende in Upper Swabia and at Fladungen in northern Franconia.
Gangulphus became also associated with the spot now occupied by the area known as Saint-Gingolph, where he is said to have dedicated himself as a hermit to a life of prayer and penance.
Local legends confused Gangulphus with a hypothetical soldier of the Theban Legion who escaped from nearby Agaunum and would have faced martyrdom there.