Saint Godfrey of Amiens

Godfrey was born in 1066 in Moulincourt, in the diocese of Soissons, the third son of a noble family. The name comes from Germanic and means peace of God. When he was five, his uncle, a bishop, entrusted him to the abbot of Mont Saint-Quentin, a monastery near Péronne, where he grew up and became a monk. He was ordained a priest in 1091 and sent to revive the abbey of Nogent, which was in ruins: he succeeded, and so well that the archbishop of Reims offered him the great abbey of Saint-Rémi. He turned it down with a line that tells you who he was: “God forbids me to abandon a poor bride for a rich one.” In 1104 he was made bishop of Amiens, and that’s where the trouble began. He took on everyone: priests who lived with concubines, people who bought church offices, lords who taxed the poor. He backed the commune of Amiens against the count, which for a bishop of that century was an almost subversive position. At one point, exasperated, he left the diocese and took refuge at the Grande Chartreuse to become a Carthusian. They came to get him and made him go back. He died in Soissons on November 8, 1115, while traveling to a council. If your name is Godfrey, today is your name day.