Bertulf of Renty

Saint Bertulf of Renty, also known as Bertoul or Bertulph, is a Merovingian-period monastic founder and abbot whose life is known almost entirely from later hagiographical tradition rather than from contemporary charters or chronicles. Medieval accounts describe him as a native of Germany, or in some recensions of Pannonia, born to pagan parents of respectable standing. No reliable source preserves a birth year or a more precise birthplace. As a young man he accepted Christian baptism and left his homeland, a pattern familiar in seventh-century stories of continental converts who then sought a monastic setting in the Frankish kingdoms of northern Gaul.

He made his way into Flanders and Artois and was received by Saint Rictrude (Rictrudis), the noble widow of Adalbald of Ostrevant and foundress of the double monastery of Marchiennes on the Scarpe. Under her influence Bertulf took up the monastic life. Marchiennes at that period housed communities of monks and nuns and belonged to the Columbanian and mixed monastic world of later seventh-century Neustria and Austrasia. Bertulf’s association with Rictrude is one of the more stable elements of the tradition and places him among the aristocratic and monastic networks of the Scarpe and Lys valleys in the second half of the seventh century. Rictrude herself died toward the end of that century, which is consistent with Bertulf’s later abbacy.

A local magnate, named in the Lives as Wambert (or, in some versions, Adalbert), founded a monastery at Renty in Artois and entrusted it to Bertulf, who became its first abbot. Renty lay in the county of Artois, in what is now the Pas-de-Calais in northern France. As abbot he is portrayed as a pastor of his monks, a host to travellers, and a protector of the poor. Later legend credited him with miracles in life and after death, as is conventional in Merovingian and early Carolingian vitae. The house at Renty was subsequently regarded as Benedictine, though the exact rule observed in Bertulf’s own day cannot be demonstrated from contemporary evidence. The sources present him as a monk from the time of his conversion and do not record a wife or children.

The traditional date of his death is 5 February, in or about the year 705, at Renty. He was buried at his monastery, and a local cult grew up around his tomb. His feast is kept on 5 February. Relics associated with him remained connected with Renty through the Middle Ages. Beyond the outline given by the later Lives—Germanic origin, conversion, discipleship under Rictrude, and the abbacy of Renty—almost nothing can be independently verified. He was never the subject of a formal papal canonization of the later medieval type; his status as a saint rests on ancient local veneration.