Saint Faro

Saint Faro, known in Latin as Burgundofaro, was a Frankish bishop of Meaux in the seventh century. He belonged to a leading Burgundian noble family settled in the Brie country around Meaux. His father, Chagneric (also rendered Agneric or Chagnericus), was a magnate who received Saint Columbanus as a guest; his mother was Leodegundis. The family’s place in the Columbanian network is unusually well attested. Jonas of Bobbio, writing in the mid-seventh century, describes Columbanus’s stay at Chagneric’s villa and the blessing given to Faro’s sister Burgundofara, who went on to found the double monastery of Faremoutiers (Evoriacum) on ancestral land. Faro’s brother Chagnoald became bishop of Laon. Together the siblings exemplify the strategy of Merovingian aristocrats who combined court service, episcopal office, and monastic foundation.

Before his consecration Faro followed the secular path expected of his rank. He served at the Neustrian court, in the milieu of Clothar II and Dagobert I. He married a woman whom later tradition names Blidechild (Blidechildis). According to hagiography, husband and wife subsequently agreed to separate in order to enter religion: she took the veil, and he received clerical orders. Such conversions of married nobles, often under the influence of Luxeuil and the Rule of Columbanus, are a characteristic feature of seventh-century Frankish Christianity. Faro was made bishop of Meaux in the earlier seventh century; surviving episcopal lists do not fix the year with certainty, and modern estimates commonly fall in the 620s or 630s. He occupied the see for several decades.

His episcopate is remembered above all for monastic patronage. He established a monastery dedicated to the Holy Cross at Meaux, a house later known as the Abbey of Saint-Faron, where he was eventually buried. He granted an estate at Breuil, in the Brie, to the Irish hermit Saint Fiacre, who founded there a hermitage and a hospice for the sick and for pilgrims; the place became Saint-Fiacre-en-Brie. Through these acts Faro tied the ancient Gallo-Roman see of the Meldi to the Irish and Columbanian current then reshaping the Frankish church. Contemporary charters in his name are lacking; knowledge of these foundations rests on later narrative sources, including the ninth-century Life of Faro associated with Bishop Hildegar of Meaux and the traditions surrounding Fiacre and Burgundofara. Historians therefore accept the outline of family, office, and patronage while treating miraculous and courtly episodes in the medieval vitae with reserve.

Faro died at Meaux in the early 670s, on a day kept as 28 October (the year 672 is the date long given in Catholic historical tradition, though some modern notices prefer circa 675), and was interred in his monastery of the Holy Cross. A local cult developed around his tomb. The Roman Martyrology records him on 28 October. The Abbey of Saint-Faron remained a center of his memory through the Middle Ages; it did not survive the upheavals of the early modern and revolutionary periods. No formal papal canonization in the later medieval or Tridentine sense is recorded; his sainthood belongs to the era of popular and episcopal cult. Beyond Meaux and the related cults of Fiacre and Faremoutiers, Faro never became a figure of wide European devotion, and no extensive list of patronages is attached to his name.