Saint Audoin (Ouen) of Rouen

He was born about 609 at Sancy, near Soissons, according to Leon Clugnet in the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia; Antonio Borrelli, writing for Santi e Beati, says about 600, near Soissons. ¹⁴ His father was Autharius and his mother Aiga, and the family, Clugnet says, was Gallo-Roman. ¹ Alban Butler calls the father Autaire, "a virtuous French nobleman, who was settled in Brie." ² He was also called Dado, or Dadon, and the name Audoin comes from the Latin Audoenus. ¹²⁴

Butler and Borrelli both tell how Saint Columban, staying with the family, blessed the boys while they were still small. ²⁴ Butler names them as Ouen and Adon, and says that Adon later founded the double monastery of Jouarre on the family's land near the Marne. ² Audoin himself was educated at the abbey of Saint Médard and then received at the court of Clothaire II. ¹

Dagobert I made him his referendary, the officer who kept the royal seal, and Clugnet says the king "profited greatly by his talents and learning," gave him important missions, and is believed to have had him compile the Salic Law. ¹ Butler adds that "original acts signed by him by virtue of this office are still extant." ² At court he found Eligius, the goldsmith who became bishop of Noyon, whose life, Clugnet says, "was very similar to his own." ¹ Borrelli names other friends of those years who also became bishops and saints, among them Sulpicius and Desiderius. ⁴ Both of them, Clugnet says, "despite the disorders of the Frankish king, served him faithfully." ¹

While still a layman he founded a monastery at Rebais, in the forest of Brie, on land the king granted him: in 634, by Clugnet and Butler, or in 636, by Borrelli. ¹²⁴ Butler says that on the advice of Saint Faro, bishop of Meaux, he sent for Saint Agil, a disciple of Columban, and had him made the first abbot by a council at Clichy in 636. ² Borrelli says the first monks came from Luxeuil, the abbey Columban had founded. ⁴

Butler says Audoin wanted to retire to Rebais and become a monk himself, but Dagobert and his nobles would not hear of it. ² He and Eligius, "though yet laymen," were consulted "as oracles even of the bishops." ²

When Dagobert died, which Butler dates to 638, the two friends considered themselves released from their duties at court. ¹² Clugnet says Audoin was ordained priest by Dieudonné, bishop of Mâcon, and was then elected to the see of Rouen, left vacant by the death of Saint Romanus. ¹ Butler says Clovis II kept him on as referendary for a time before letting him take the clerical tonsure. ²

The sources disagree about the consecration. Clugnet says he was elected in 639 and consecrated at Rouen on May 21, 640, together with Eligius. ¹ Butler puts the double consecration at Reims in 640, after a long preparation in retirement, fasting and prayer. ² Borrelli has him elected in 640, still a layman, and consecrated on May 13, 641, after a year spent studying doctrine. ⁴ Georges Goyau, writing on the archdiocese of Rouen, dates his episcopate from 641. ⁵

Rouen still had "barbarian districts from which paganism had not disappeared," Clugnet writes, and under Audoin "the worship of false gods" ceased, monasteries multiplied and theological study grew. ¹ Butler says he increased "not his pomp, but his humility, austerities, and charities," and that he worked to root out simony and to reform discipline, especially at the council of Chalon, which Butler dates to 644 and Borrelli to between 647 and 649. ²⁴ Borrelli also counts him among the most trusted counselors of Queen Bathild in her regency, and says he made the journey to Rome in 676. ⁴

Goyau says his episcopate was "distinguished by the foundation of the monasteries of Fontenelle, Jumièges, and Fécamp." ⁵ Saint Wandrille obtained the land for Fontenelle through the influence of his friend Audoin, and Audoin consecrated its great basilica of Saint Peter in 657. ⁷ Borrelli says he consecrated the churches of both Fontenelle and Jumièges and protected their founders, Wandrille and Philibert, his old friends from court. ⁴

Butler, in his life of Saint Bertille, says that she first confided her wish to become a nun to Audoin, and that the two of them prayed over it for some time before her parents were told. ⁸ She went on to Jouarre, his brother's foundation, and from there to be the first abbess of Chelles. ⁸

Clugnet says that "occasionally the statesman reappeared" in him: he supported Ebroin, the mayor of the palace, in his struggle against the aristocracy, and after Ebroin's death went to Cologne at the king's invitation and restored peace between Neustria and Austrasia. ¹ Butler says King Theodoric III employed him "in pacifying those that were at variance, and in calming seditions." ²

Butler tells the end. Having made peace between the two kingdoms, Audoin went to bring the news to the king at Clichy, near Paris, where an assembly of bishops and lords was meeting, and fell ill there with a fever. ² He asked the king that Saint Ansbert, abbot of Fontenelle, whom the clergy and people of Rouen wanted, should succeed him, and he died at Clichy on August 24, 683, "having possessed the episcopal dignity forty-three years." ² Clugnet also gives 683. ¹ Santi e Beati and Goyau give 684, and Borrelli says the journey was a mission to Pippin of Herstal. ⁴⁵ The Martyrology, as the Italian bishops print it, records his death at Clichy and says, in translation, that he governed his Church "happily for forty-three years, founding many churches and favoring the building of monasteries." ³

He outlived Eligius and wrote his life, a biography that Clugnet calls "one of the most authentic historical monuments of the seventh century," full of information on the moral and religious education of the time. ¹ Ansbert, his successor, wrote a short poem on Audoin himself, which Goyau says was found in the library at Karlsruhe. ⁵

His body was brought to Rouen and buried in the abbey of Saint Peter, which, Clugnet says, "thenceforth assumed his name." ¹⁶ Gilbert Huddleston, in the encyclopedia's article on the abbey, gives his death in passing as 678. ⁶ Clugnet says the body was translated several times, in 842, in 918, and finally in 1890; Goyau says that when the Calvinists took Rouen in April 1562 they made a pyre in the abbey church and "burnt the body of St. Ouen and other relics of the basilica." ¹⁵ The church that now stands there was begun in 1318, and Huddleston thought it surpassed the cathedral of Rouen "in size and beauty." ⁶

Santi e Beati names him patron of Rouen and of Normandy, and says he is invoked against floods and epidemics. ⁴ No other source used here names a patronage for him.

Saint Audoin's feast is August 24, the day of his death at Clichy. ²⁴ The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on that day. ³

He spent his young manhood keeping the seal of a king whose life the sources do not admire, and served him faithfully. ¹ He wanted to leave for the monastery he had founded and was not allowed to, and stayed. ²

Most of what he built was for other people. Rebais had another man as its abbot, Fontenelle and Jumièges had their own founders, and his best-known book is the life of his friend. ²⁴⁷¹

His last work was making peace between two kingdoms, and he died on the way back with the news. ² By Clugnet's dates he was about seventy-four, and he spent his last days asking for a good successor. ¹²