medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today, January 22, is also the feast day of:
Barnardus of Vienne (d. 842). We know about the Carolingian prelate and monastic founder B. (also Bernardus; in French usually Barnard) from the correspondence of his friend St. Agobardus of Lyon, from comments by his professed disciple St. Ado of Vienne, from records of various local councils, and from a series of undated medieval Vitae of which the one given in the _Acta Sanctorum_ (BHL 991) does not seem particularly close in time to its subject.
According to the latter text, B. was born to noble parents in the diocese of Lyon (Vienne propers printed in 1592 name them Bernardus and Helirda) and was educated for the church. But when his brothers had died (presumably these were older than B.) he was removed from school and was trained militarily in Charlemagne's army. Upon the death of his father B. remained in the military but was religious in spirit and used his inheritance to purchase from the abbot of Luxeuil a property at today's Ambronay (Ain) where he rebuilt a church dedicated to the BVM and established a monastery. At this point he was married and a father but was now living chastely with his spouse; soon, though, he left his family and entered his monastery as a simple monk.
B. lived very ascetically and was exemplary in exercising monastic virtues; in time he was elected abbot. In that role B. was again exemplary. Elected (arch)bishop of Vienne, he resisted this honor until Charlemagne persuaded the pope to compel him to accept. As bishop B. exercised extreme self-mortification, often appeared faint, wept a lot at Mass, and when someone confessed a sin to him punished himself more severely than he did the sinner. Using his patrimony, he built at today's Romans-sur-Isère (Drôme) a church dedicated to St. Peter and attached to it a monastery which latter he entered when near death. He died on a Sunday in an odor of sanctity and with his cell full of heavenly light. B. was laid to rest on 23. February in his monastery church of St. Peter.
Thus far this Vita. B. was a co-signer of, and possibly a co-drafter of, Agobard of Lyon's anti-Jewish treatise _De iudaicis superstitionibus et erroribus_. His support of the future Lothar I's revolt against Louis the Pious in 833 caused him to be ejected from his see for several years. B. was again serving as archbishop in 837 and is recorded among the participants of the synod of Quierzy in 838. That he died in 842 is an early modern calculation based on evidence whose accuracy is not entirely certain. A small collection of B.'s posthumous healing miracles (BHL 995) is attributed to Ado of Vienne.
In the 930s the monastery at Romans was converted to a canonry; B. (who is also known as B. of Romans) was accorded an elevatio there in 944. In 1050, when the canonry was reformed, its collegiate church was called that of St. Barnardus. Herewith an illustrated, French-language page on the originally eleventh- to fifteenth-century église collégiale Saint-Barnard in Romans-sur-Isère:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coll%C3%A9giale_Saint-Barnard
B.'s putative remains at Romans were profaned by Huguenots in the sixteenth century.
An illustrated, French-language page on B.'s foundation at Ambronay, whose surviving buildings are mostly late medieval:
http://tinyurl.com/5wky65b
An English-language account of the same house, with a few views:
http://tinyurl.com/4tzsc4h
A set of views:
http://tinyurl.com/4do2pgs
Today is B.'s day of commemoration in the RM and his feast day in the diocese of Valence (which latter considers 22. January to be B.'s _dies natalis_). In the diocese of Belley-Ars he is celebrated on 19. January (this diocese gives B.'s _dies natalis_ as 23. Jan.). 23. January seems to have been B.'s early modern feast day in these dioceses and also in those of Grenoble, Lausanne, and Lyon; given the evidence of BHL 991, that was probably also his customary feast day in at least the later Middle Ages. This is B.'s first appearance in this list's 'FEASTS'/'saints of the day'/'Feasts and Saints of the Day'.
Best,
John Dillon
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