Chagnoald

Chagnoald, whose name also appears as Cagnoald or Cagnou, was a Frankish churchman of the early seventh century who became bishop of Laon. He belonged to the noble kin-group later called the Faronids, after his brother Burgundofaro (Saint Faro), bishop of Meaux. Their father, Chagneric, was a noble attached to the court of King Theudebert II of Austrasia and kept a household in the countryside of the Meaux region. A sister, Burgundofara (Saint Fara), founded the double monastery of Faremoutiers, one of the chief Columbanian houses in Neustria. Jonas of Bobbio records that the Irish abbot Columbanus, then based at Luxeuil, visited Chagneric’s home and blessed the young Burgundofara, an episode later linked to her monastic vocation. The same family setting explains Chagnoald’s own entry into the Columbanian circle.

Chagnoald took the monastic habit at Luxeuil and lived there as a disciple of Columbanus. Luxeuil at that date followed the austere Rule of Columbanus and trained a generation of Frankish nobles who later occupied bishoprics and abbacies. Jonas of Bobbio, writing a generation later, states that he learned particulars of Columbanus’s life from Chagnoald himself, which shows that the future bishop of Laon was treated as a trustworthy witness to the abbot’s words and deeds and belonged to the inner group of Luxeuil monks rather than to a merely distant following.

Around 610 King Theuderic II, acting with the queen-grandmother Brunhilda, expelled Columbanus from Luxeuil. Chagnoald was among the monks who accompanied the abbot into exile. Jonas places him with Columbanus among the Alemanni at Bregenz on Lake Constance. The Life of Columbanus describes, in that setting, the bursting of a great vat of beer that local people had prepared as an offering to Wodan, a story for which Chagnoald’s presence in the missionary party supplies context. When Columbanus crossed the Alps to found Bobbio in Italy, Chagnoald did not remain there. He returned to Gaul, where noble birth and monastic formation made him a candidate for high ecclesiastical office.

Chagnoald was appointed bishop of Laon, a see in the north of the Frankish kingdoms. His episcopate fell in the years when Clothar II and then Dagobert I were consolidating royal authority and when Columbanian monks and their episcopal pupils were founding or reforming houses across Neustria and Austrasia. He is reported to have taken part in the Council of Reims assembled under Archbishop Sonnatius around 627-630. His brother Faro’s tenure at Meaux and his sister’s rule at Faremoutiers meant that the family formed a small but influential cluster of Columbanian institutions. Beyond these outlines, the acts of his government of the church of Laon are not preserved in any detail.

Chagnoald died in 633. A cult developed in the Frankish church, and he is recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church and by the Eastern Orthodox Church. His feast day is 6 September. No early vita devoted exclusively to him is known to survive, and later medieval notices are brief. The principal narrative source remains Jonas of Bobbio, complemented by martyrological entries and by what can be reconstructed of Faronid genealogy. His date of birth is unknown, and neither the exact place of his death nor his burial site is securely documented in reliable historical sources.