Abbot Valery

Abbot Valery, known in Latin as Walaricus or Valericus and in French as Valéry, was a monastic founder of the Frankish church in the late sixth and early seventh centuries. He is remembered as the first abbot of the monastery of Leuconaus, later called Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, near the mouth of the Somme in Picardy. According to the medieval vita that preserves his tradition, he was born in the Auvergne of parents of modest status and spent his youth as a shepherd before entering the monastic life. Seeking a stricter observance, he is said to have stayed at the monastery of Autun and at the abbey of Saint-Maurice d'Agaune before joining Luxeuil in the southern Vosges, the principal house of the Irish missionary Saint Columbanus.

Luxeuil, under Columbanus and his successor Eustasius, trained monks who were later sent to preach and to found houses throughout the Frankish kingdoms. Valery belonged to this Columbanian milieu. In the early seventh century he was dispatched to the coastal region of Neustria, whose conversion was still incomplete. He settled at Leuconaus (also written Leuconae) on the Somme estuary, at first as a hermit. Disciples gathered around him, and the hermitage became a monastery of which he was the first abbot. Later tradition associates the foundation with the favor of the Merovingian king Chlothar II. A companion and eventual successor, Blitmund, is named in the hagiographical accounts as sharing the work of the new community.

Valery died at his monastery. His feast is kept on 12 December, the traditional day of his death. Medieval sources commonly place the event in the early 620s, with both 619 and 622 appearing in later calendars and chronicles; an exact year cannot be established from contemporary records. He was buried at Leuconaus. A local cult arose at his tomb, and the settlement that grew beside the abbey took the name Saint-Valery-sur-Somme. In the following centuries the monastery adopted the Benedictine Rule and became a house of regional importance. It suffered during the Scandinavian raids of the ninth century, and the relics of the founder were translated on more than one occasion.

In 1066, according to Norman historical tradition, William, Duke of Normandy, encamped at Saint-Valery-sur-Somme while awaiting a wind for the crossing to England and had the relics of Saint Valery borne in procession; the subsequent favorable weather and the success of the expedition were ascribed in part to the saint's intercession. The cult remained centered on Picardy, though the saint's name was also attached to Saint-Valery-en-Caux in Normandy through later relic movements. Valery is venerated as a missionary monk and abbot of the Columbanian tradition. Almost all narrative detail about his early life depends on a vita composed well after his death and on liturgical and local tradition; the existence of the abbey he founded and the early date of his commemoration are the most secure historical facts.