Gunther of Bamberg

The other, placing more emphasis on properties, holds that Gunther was a son of a certain count named Pilgrim who held Salaberg and Haag and was related to the Aribonids.

The historian Ernst Klebel, who held the second view of Gunther's paternity, argued that she belonged to the Eppensteiner family of the Dukes of Carinthia.

[1] He also held a canonry in the collegiate church of Saints Simon and Jude, founded by Henry III in his favored city of Goslar.

[2] In church politics, Gunther was an ally of Archbishop Anno II of Cologne, who had headed the cathedral school at Bamberg until 1054.

Like most churchmen who owed their position to the patronage of the Salian emperors, Gunther was sympathetic to but did not promote the Gregorian church reform.

At the same synod, Gunther declared his intention of forcing the Slavs living in his diocese between the Main and the Regnitz rivers[1] to conform their marriages to canon law and to pay tithes or else face expulsion.

[3] In 1060, Gunther broke with the regent Agnes when she refused to support his claim to authority over the monastery of Bergen, which was disputed by the diocese of Eichstätt.

The same annals record that the young Gunther was suspected by Byzantine authorities of being the Emperor Henry IV in disguise and so encountered difficulties in Constantinople.

[1] He criticised the bishop for his luxurious living—alleging that he was so idle and fat that he needed to be "rolled out [of bed] by mechanical contraptions" (mechanicis apparatibus ... evolvendus)—and his literary tastes, which were decidedly secular, tending mainly towards the legends about Theoderic the Great.

[7] It has been suggested, based on a certain reading of Meinhard, that Gunther himself probably wrote secular poetry and may even have participated in "dramatic presentations" or knightly games at court.

[7] According to the biography of Bishop Altmann of Passau, who took part in the pilgrimage of 1064–65, the author of the Ezzolied was also among the pilgrims and he composed the song to be sung on the journey.

On this last theory, the Ezzolied was commissioned by Gunther to provide a religious poem in the vernacular that could compete with the legends about Theoderic the Great.