Saint Theobald of Provins

He was born at Provins in Champagne in 1017, into a noble family. ¹² Butler and santiebeati.it both name his father as Count Arnoul, of the house of the counts of Champagne, and Butler says the boy was named after an uncle, Theobald, archbishop of Vienne. ²³

As a young man he read the lives of the desert fathers. Both Butler and santiebeati.it name the four who held him most: John the Baptist, Paul the Hermit, Antony and Arsenius. ²³ According to Butler he often visited a hermit named Burchard, who lived on a small island in the Seine, and began trying out fasting, night vigils and long prayer for himself. He turned down the marriages and the places at court or in the army that his father could have arranged. ²

Then came a war. Butler explains that when Rudolph, the last king of Burgundy, died in 1034, Theobald's cousin Eudo claimed the crown and the emperor Conrad took it, and Count Arnoul ordered his son to lead a body of troops to his cousin's aid. ² Theobald told his father that he had vowed to leave the world. Butler says he pressed the point respectfully until he "at length extorted his consent"; santiebeati.it says the count was taken aback but agreed. ²³ The encyclopedia tells it differently: in its account he left in 1054 "without the knowledge of his parents". ¹

He did not go alone. His companion was Walter, a young nobleman and his close friend. ¹²³ The two went first to the abbey of Saint Remigius at Reims, sent their servants home with the baggage, exchanged their own rich clothes for the clothes of two beggars, and set out barefoot. ²³

The sources do not agree on where they first stopped. The encyclopedia has them living as hermits at Sussy in the Ardennes and then at Pittingen, in the Diocese of Trier, a district it says belonged in its day to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. ¹ Butler calls it the forest of Petingen and places it in Swabia; santiebeati.it calls it the forest of Petting, in what is now Luxembourg. ²³ There they built two small cells. ²³

They had no skill at the hermit's traditional work of weaving mats and baskets, so they went into the villages and hired themselves out by the day. ²³ Butler lists the jobs: serving masons, working in the fields, carrying stones and mortar, loading and unloading carts, cleaning stables for the farmers' servants, working the bellows and making the fires for the forges. ² With their wages, he says, they bought coarse brown bread, and that was all they ate. ² By day they worked with their hands and prayed in their hearts, and at night, back in the forest, they sang the divine office together. ²³

One of those jobs stayed attached to his name. Santiebeati.it mentions among their jobs making charcoal for the forges, and he is remembered as the patron saint of charcoal-burners. ¹³

They were found out. Butler says their bearing and their soft complexions showed they had not been raised to manual labor, and that their reputation for holiness began to draw people to them, so they left to stay unknown. ² They made a pilgrimage to Compostela in Spain and came back. ¹²³ Santiebeati.it adds that they had hoped to go to the Holy Land and could not, because of the Saracens. ³

At Trier, according to Butler, Theobald met his father. With his sunburned face and ragged clothes he passed for a beggar, and the count did not know him. Butler says the son was so moved he could hardly keep from speaking, but he said nothing, and to avoid another meeting he set out for Rome. ² Santiebeati.it tells the same story more briefly: he saw his father, bent with age, and kept himself from being recognized. ³

They went to Rome and to the holy places of Italy. ¹²³ The encyclopedia says that on the way back they meant to sail for Palestine from Venice, but Walter's strength gave out near Salanigo, in the Diocese of Vicenza, and they stayed. ¹

The place was remote and wooded. With the landowner's leave, Butler says, they built two cells beside an old ruined chapel. ²³ After two years Walter died. ¹²³

Theobald took the loss as a sign that he too had little time, and Butler describes a severer life from then on. He had been living on oat bread and water with roots and herbs; now he gave up bread altogether. He wore a rough hair shirt, slept on a board, and for the last five years of his life slept sitting on a wooden seat. ²

Disciples came anyway. The encyclopedia speaks of "a large number of disciples eager for salvation"; santiebeati.it says that after Walter's death he allowed a group of them to join him. ¹³ The bishop of Vicenza ordained him a priest, which santiebeati.it explains as a way to let him guide the community better. ¹²³

Word of the hermit of Salanigo traveled back to Champagne, and his parents, who had searched for him in vain for years, learned that he was alive. ²³ Old as they were, they set out for Italy. ²³ Butler describes the meeting: seeing his cell, his tattered clothes and his wasted body, they threw themselves at his feet and for a long time could only weep. ²

His father had to return home. His mother, Gisla, stayed, with her husband's consent, and Theobald built her a small hut some way from his own and directed her in the religious life for the rest of her days. ¹²³

His last illness was long and ugly. Butler says his body was covered with sores and ulcers and every limb in pain; santiebeati.it calls it a painful and repulsive disease, perhaps leprosy or one of the illnesses that went by that name in the Middle Ages. ²³ Both say he bore it with great patience. ²³

Shortly before he died he sent for the abbot of a Camaldolese community. Butler names him as Peter, abbot of Vangadizza, and says Theobald had received the religious habit from him a year earlier; the encyclopedia says only that he entered the Camaldolese Order shortly before his death. ¹² He commended his mother and his disciples to the abbot, received viaticum, and died in peace on June 30, 1066. ¹²³

Butler adds that he was "about thirty-three years old", having spent twelve years at Salanigo and three in Swabia and on pilgrimage. ² The same paragraph gives his birth as 1017, which the encyclopedia and santiebeati.it also give, and the two figures cannot both be right. ¹²³ Both are reported here as Butler prints them.

The encyclopedia says numerous miracles were reported of him, some before his death and some after. ¹ It credits Alexander II, who reigned from 1061 to 1073, with permitting his public veneration, and santiebeati.it says Alexander II canonized him seven years after his death. ¹³ Butler names a different pope, Alexander III. ²

According to Butler his relics were moved to a church belonging to the abbey of Saint Columba at Sens, and later to a chapel near Auxerre called Saint-Thibaud-aux-Bois, and he was venerated at Sens, Provins, Paris, Auxerre, Langres, Toul, Trier, Autun and Beauvais. ² The encyclopedia says his cult spread especially in Italy, France, Belgium and Luxembourg. ¹

The Catholic Encyclopedia calls him "the patron saint of charcoal-burners". ¹ Santiebeati.it names him protector of charcoal-burners and of tanners. ³ The first fits the work he did with Walter in the forest, where, among other things, they made charcoal for the forges. ³

The feast of Saint Theobald is June 30, the day he died. ¹⁴ The Roman Martyrology enters him on that day as a priest and hermit at Salanigo, born of the counts of Champagne, who with his friend Walter chose pilgrimage for Christ, poverty and solitude over honors and riches. ⁴ Santiebeati.it keeps him on June 30 as well. ³ Butler's Lives places him under July 1. ²

He gave up a title for day labor. The jobs Butler lists are the lowest a village had to offer, stable cleaning and hauling mortar among them, and he did them for coarse bread. ² The prayer went on underneath the work, and the office was sung at night when the work was done. ²³

He also did not get the solitude he went looking for. Each time he and Walter were noticed they moved on, and in the end disciples came to Salanigo and he took them in, became their priest, and built his mother a hut beside his own. ¹²³ The hermit spent his last years with a community around him.

The meeting at Trier is hard to read. He saw his father, old and searching for him, and let him walk past. ²³ The sources tell it as a victory over feeling, and it may have been, but they also say he could barely keep silent. ² When his parents found him years later they wept at his feet, and his mother never went home. ²

His end was a long, disfiguring illness, borne patiently. ²³ Nothing in the sources suggests it was lifted from him. He received viaticum, entrusted the people he loved to someone else, and died. ²