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Inter quos medios Martini sede sacerdos,
Eufronius fulget, metropolita sacer ;
Plaudens in sancta fratrum coeunte caterva,
Et sua membra videns, fortior exstat apex :
Laetius inde caput, quia sunt sua viscera secum,
Ecclesiae iuncto corpore crescit honor.
Domitianus, item Victorius, ambo columnae,
Spes in utrisque manens pro religionis ope.
Domnulus hinc fulget meritis, Romacharius inde,
iure sacerdotii cultor uterque Dei.
I made an attempt to demonstrate that this Romacharius - if his name was really Romacharius - was distinct from the bishop of Coutances et could have been the titular of a bishopric in the Armorican peninsula, possibly in Vannes, if not in an other capitale of old Gallo-Roman civitates, like Carhaix or Corseul:
http://www.hagio-historiographie-medievale.org/2011/07/un-eveque-peninsulaire-present-la_6322.html
Best from
ANDRE YVES BOURGES
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Romacharius (also Rompharius; in French, Romacaire, Romphaire, Rumphaire) was bishop of Coutances (Manche) in the later sixth century. As an historical figure he is known from brief mentions by St. Venantius Fortunatus (_Carmina_, 3. 6. 27-28), where he is named among the bishops of other sees present at St. Felix of Nantes' dedication of his own cathedral, and by St. Gregory of Tours (_Historia Francorum_, 8. 31), where he is said to have come to Rouen to officiate at the funeral of its murdered bishop St. Praetextatus (St. Prix). Thought to have been the immediate successor of Coutances' bishop St. Laud (St. Lô), from the eleventh century onward he enjoyed a cult along with the latter at Laud's priory in Rouen as well as later at Angers and at Coutances itself.
Romacharius has a brief Vita (BHL 7294), first attested from a breviary of Coutances printed in 1601 but thought to have been composed in about 1499. This makes him an Englishman who while traveling to Aquitaine was driven by storm to today's Barfleur (Manche), who became an associate of St. Laud, and who evangelized at Barfleur and vicinity. Greven's expanded Usuard of 1515 enters Romacharius under 18. November. Today (18. November) is his day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology. His feast day in the diocese of Coutances and Avranches is tomorrow (19. November).
The mostly eighteenth-century église paroissiale Saint-Pierre at Gatteville-le-Phare (Manche; near Barfleur) replaced a predecessor dedicated to Romacharius (attested from 1236 onward). It incorporates an originally eleventh-century tower called the Tour Saint-Romphaire:
http://tinyurl.com/qdyvks2
Some period-pertinent images of St. Romacharius:
a) as depicted in a later fifteenth-century ambulatory window (bay 9; 1470) in the église Notre-Dame in Carentan (Manche):
http://tinyurl.com/pt9fz6j
The window as a whole:
http://www.mesvitrauxfavoris.fr/index_htm_files/351087.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/nvy3zdx
b) as depicted in an historiated initial "E" in a fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century collectary for the Use of the priory of St. Lô in Rouen (before 1518; Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, ms. 1272, fol. 107v):
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht16/ IRHT_030932-p.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
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