Saint Germanus of Auxerre

Germanus was born at Auxerre about 378 into one of the noblest families of Gaul; his parents were Rusticus and Germanilla. He studied at the schools of Arles and Lyon and then in Rome, where he learned eloquence and civil law and pleaded before the court of the prefect. He married Eustachia, a lady well regarded at the imperial court, and the emperor sent him back to Gaul as one of the six dukes who governed its provinces, with his residence at Auxerre.

According to the account of his life, he hung his hunting trophies on a tree linked with pagan worship, and after a dispute over it Bishop Amator tonsured him against his will and made him a deacon, intending him as his successor. When Amator died, Germanus was chosen unanimously and consecrated bishop of Auxerre on July 7, 418.

In 429, sent by the bishops of Gaul with the backing of Pope Celestine, he went to Britain with Lupus, bishop of Troyes, to oppose the teaching of Pelagius, and tradition places their great debate at the shrine of Saint Alban. An early Life of Saint Patrick says that Patrick was among his companions on this mission. His earliest Life, written by Constantius of Lyon, credits him with the “Alleluia victory,” in which the Britons he led drove off Pictish and Saxon raiders by shouting “Alleluia” three times. On the way, at Nanterre, he noticed a young girl, Genevieve, and consecrated her to God. He went back to Britain with Severus, bishop of Trier, in a year usually given as 447, though historians disagree on the date.

His last mission was made for the people of Armorica, in western Gaul, against whom Aetius had sent the Alans. He reached Milan on June 17, 448, and went on to Ravenna, where Bishop Peter Chrysologus welcomed him and the Empress Galla Placidia received him. He died there on July 31, 448, after an illness of seven days, though some sources give other years. Galla Placidia dressed his body, and a procession brought it home to Auxerre, where it arrived on September 22, the feast of Saint Maurice.

He was buried in the oratory of Saint Maurice, which he had built at Auxerre. Queen Clotilde, who came to pray at his tomb, had a larger church built there, and it grew into the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Germain. Charles the Bald had the shrine opened in the ninth century, and the body was found intact. It remained in the church until 1567, when the Huguenots took Auxerre, desecrated the shrine and threw out the relics. The ninth-century crypts around his tomb survive, and the abbey buildings now house the city’s museum of art and history. His cult spread to Britain, where Cornwall and St Albans honored him before the Reformation, and in Paris the church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois bears his name.

The crypts of Saint-Germain keep a cycle of Carolingian wall paintings of the ninth century, and the museum shows in the former sacristy the so-called shroud of Saint Germain, a cloth dating from about the year 1000. The scene in which he recognizes the child Genevieve at Nanterre belongs to the mural of the pastoral life of Saint Genevieve that Pierre Puvis de Chavannes painted between 1874 and 1879 in the church of Sainte-Geneviève, now the Panthéon, in Paris; a smaller version of it, a triptych dated 1879, is at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California.

Patron of Auxerre.

• Auxerre, abbey of Saint-GermainThe Carolingian crypt that holds his tomb, shown on guided visits limited to fifteen people, in the abbey that now houses the city museum.
• Paris, Saint-Germain-l’AuxerroisThe church facing the Louvre that bears his name.

On our ways: Auxerre.

• Via IoannaeJoan’s Way, eight days