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Biography

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Simon de Crépy, also known as Simon of Valois and venerated as Saint Simon de Valois, was a late eleventh-century French magnate who surrendered a great territorial inheritance in order to live as a monk and hermit. He was the son of Raoul IV, count of Valois, Amiens and the Vexin (commonly called Raoul de Crépy), and of Adèle of Bar-sur-Aube. Through his father he belonged to a lineage that dominated a strategic corridor between the Île-de-France, Picardy and Normandy; through his mother he was heir to Champagne lordships including Bar-sur-Aube and Vitry. After Raoul's death in 1074, Simon succeeded to this complex of counties and became one of the most powerful lay princes on the borders of the Capetian royal domain. His sister Adèle was married to Herbert IV, count of Vermandois, a match that further illustrates the family's standing among the high nobility of northern France.

The scale of Simon's lands alarmed neighbouring rulers. King Philip I of France had a direct interest in the Vexin and in limiting the independence of so great a vassal, while William the Conqueror, duke of Normandy and king of England, faced Simon across the Norman-French frontier. Chroniclers record that marriage alliances were proposed which would have tied the young count to one or another of these courts, and the name of a daughter of William of Normandy appears in some accounts of a projected but unfulfilled betrothal. None of these unions took place. Near-contemporary writers, among them Orderic Vitalis and the anonymous author of a Latin life of Simon, depict him as increasingly attracted to the monastic reform movement of his age, in contact with Cluniac circles and with the spiritual ideals associated with figures such as Hugh of Cluny.

In 1077 Simon renounced secular power. He made over the Vexin to the French crown and arranged the remainder of his inheritance for his sister and for ecclesiastical beneficiaries, then took the Benedictine habit at the abbey of Saint-Oyend in the Jura, the house later known as Saint-Claude. From there he travelled to Italy. Pope Gregory VII received him with marked honour and, according to the hagiographical tradition, wished to advance him to high ecclesiastical office, which Simon refused. Preferring a stricter life, he lived as a hermit in the neighbourhood of Rome while remaining at the disposal of the papacy. In an era defined by the Investiture Controversy and by wars among the Norman rulers of southern Italy and of Normandy, Gregory employed him as a trusted intermediary.

Simon is associated with the reconciliation between Gregory VII and Robert Guiscard, duke of Apulia, and he was sent to northern Europe to mediate between William the Conqueror and William's eldest son, Robert Curthose. He died in 1082; monastic tradition fixed his feast on 30 September. He was honoured as a saint in Benedictine communities, above all at Saint-Claude, where a cult developed around his memory as a prince who had chosen poverty and as a peacemaker. The veneration remained local and monastic in character. No papal canonization of the later formal type is recorded, and later centuries remembered him chiefly through monastic legendaries and regional calendars rather than through a widespread popular cult.

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