Saint Austreberta of Pavilly

There is no article on her in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, which names her only in a list of the saints of the diocese of Rouen, as "St. Austreberta, Benedictine abbess (seventh century)." ⁵ The Martyrology gives her one sentence. ¹ The fullest accounts used here are Henri Platelle's biography, reprinted on Santi e Beati, and two leaflets on the saints and the chapel of Pavilly published by the parish on the site of the Archdiocese of Rouen, which name as their sources lives of her written in 1888 and in 1635. ²³⁴

The leaflets tell her story as Pavilly tells it, miracles included. ³ Where they say something no other source says, this page attributes it to them.

Platelle says she was born about 630 at Marconne, near Hesdin, in the diocese of Thérouanne. ² Her father, Badefrid, served at the court of King Dagobert, and her mother, Framehilde or Framosa, is honored as a saint. ² The parish calls Badefrid count of Hesdin and Framehilde a princess of royal descent, and says that for all their wealth they kept away from court and were known for taking in the poor. ³

At ten years old, the parish says, she saw her reflection in the water of a fountain and an angel wrapping her head in a virgin's veil. ³ When her father fixed the date of a marriage he had arranged for her, she ran away with her little brother. ³ The parish says that at the flooded Canche she made the sign of the cross and crossed a submerged bridge on water that held firm under them, and threw herself at the feet of Saint Omer, the bishop. ³ He gave her the veil. ²³

Platelle tells it more plainly: she received the veil from Saint Audomar, the Latin name of Omer, and lived as a consecrated virgin in her parents' house before entering a monastery on the Somme. ² He calls the house Fort; the parish and the summary on Santi e Beati call it Port, and the summary places it at Abbeville. ²³

The parish says the nuns took turns baking the bread. ³ One day, with the oven hot and the loaves ready, the little broom she was using to clear the coals caught fire and burned up. ³ She made the sign of the cross, went into the oven, swept it out with the long sleeves of her habit, and came out, the leaflet says, with neither hair nor clothing touched by the fire. ³

She stayed fourteen years, Platelle says. ² The parish says that her humility made the sisters love her and that she became their prioress; the summary on Santi e Beati says she was soon elected abbess. ²³

The sources tell the founding of Pavilly in three ways. The Martyrology, in its Italian and its Spanish text alike, says, in translation, that she governed the monastery "recently founded by Saint Audoin, bishop." ¹⁶ Platelle says Philibert, the founder of Jumièges, came to look for her after her fourteen years on the Somme, to put her at the head of a monastery he had founded at Pavilly, in the Pays de Caux near Rouen. ²⁷ Audomar went on advising her, he says, and blessed the church of the new abbey, in Platelle's words as translated here "doubtless with the authorization of Saint Audoin, the bishop of the place." ²

The parish says that about 662 Philibert founded one of the first monasteries for women under the Rule of Saint Benedict on land given by Amalbert, lord of Pavilly, gathered twenty-five nuns there and put Austreberta at their head. ⁴ Its other leaflet adds that Amalbert gave the land because his daughter Aurée wanted to be a nun and he did not want her to go far, and that it was the archbishop of Rouen, Saint Ouen, as the French call Audoin, who gave Austreberta her abbess's crosier. ³

She kept the Benedictine rule strictly, and some of the nuns did not like it. ³ The parish says they tried first to poison her and then told Amalbert that she had mistreated his daughter. ³ He came at her with his sword. ³ She took off her veil, bowed her head and waited for the blow, and Amalbert, thrown by her calm, stopped, knelt in front of her, and revered her from then on. ³

The monastery grew until it had three churches, dedicated to Our Lady, Saint Peter and Saint Martin. ³⁴ Platelle says she governed it for forty years. ²

On February 2, 704, the feast of the Purification, the parish says, she told her sisters she would die the following Sunday, and religious and lay people came to the monastery for her blessing. ³ She died on Sunday, February 10, saying, in the parish's French as translated here, "I am coming to you, my Lord, whom I have loved so much." ³ Platelle gives February 10 and says the year was probably 704. ²

She was buried in the basilica of Saint Peter, and her tomb drew pilgrims. ³⁴ The parish says her body was placed in a shrine on October 19, 723, and that when the Northmen came the nuns took her relics first to Marconne and then to Montreuil-sur-Mer, where they founded a new house; Platelle also says the relics went to Montreuil. ²³ The Northmen destroyed the monastery in the ninth century, and in 1091 the lord of Pavilly gave the site to the Benedictines of Mont-Sainte-Catherine, who built the chapel of Saint Austreberta where the basilica had stood. ⁴ At Montreuil, the parish says, the relics were burned in a revolutionary festival on September 30, 1793, except for a few small reliquaries the nuns had hidden, which are still kept there. ³

The best-known story of her at Pavilly, in which she makes a wolf that had eaten the nuns' donkey carry their linen in its place, is painted in the chapel and stands in its statue of her. ⁴ The parish says it is a later legend, of which there is no trace in the lives written near her time or in the old manuscripts of her miracles. ³

Platelle says she is patron of Barentin, near Rouen, whose river is named the Austreberthe after her. ² No source used here names any other patronage.

Saint Austreberta's feast is February 10, the day of her death. ²³ The Roman Martyrology commemorates her on that day. ¹

She knew early what she wanted and would not be married off, and the story as Pavilly tells it has a girl running from home with her small brother to find a bishop. ³ She then waited in her parents' house until she could go. ²

She did not choose Pavilly. She had spent fourteen years in one house and was asked to leave it for a new one, where some of the nuns resented her rule. ²³ The story of Amalbert's sword is the parish's, and in it she answers an armed man by bowing her head. ³

She governed for about forty years, and when she knew she was dying she told her sisters and let people come for her blessing. ²³ The words the parish gives her at the end are those of someone going to a person she loves. ³