Saint Medard

Medard was born in Salency, in Picardy. His father Nectardus was one of the Frankish nobles who had come with Childeric I; his mother Protagia came from a Gallo-Roman family and had become a Christian to marry him. According to Jacobus de Voragine he had a twin brother, Gildard, who was archbishop of Rouen. He became bishop of Tournai and then of Noyon, and in 534 he united the two sees. He was one of the bishops who took on the work of evangelizing Gaul after the conversion of Clovis. The best-known episode of his life concerns Queen Radegund, wife of Chlothar I. She had been taken as spoils of war as a child and married to the king who had wiped out her family; when her husband also killed her brother, she fled and went to Medard, asking to be consecrated to God. The king’s warriors were there, to intimidate him. Medard hesitated, then consecrated her a deaconess. Radegund is a saint too. A childhood episode of Medard’s has also become proverbial: an eagle spreading its wings over him to shelter him from the rain. From there, perhaps, comes the French saying about the weather — if it rains on Saint Medard’s day, it rains for forty days — which is the French counterpart of our own Saint Bibiana. He died in Noyon on June 8, 560. If your name is Medardo, today is your name day.