Virgin Burgundofora

Saint Burgundofara, also recorded as Burgundofora, Fara, or Fare, was a Frankish noblewoman of the early seventh century and the foundress and first abbess of the monastery later called Faremoutiers in the Brie region east of Paris. She was the daughter of Chagneric, a magnate connected with the Austrasian court of King Theudebert II, and belonged to a family that produced several ecclesiastical figures. Her brothers included Burgundofaro, who became bishop of Meaux, and Cagnoald, who became bishop of Laon. The household was established in the country of Meaux, in the Frankish kingdom corresponding to modern north-central France.

The principal early narrative of her vocation comes from Jonas of Bobbio’s Life of Columbanus, composed in the early 640s while Burgundofara was still living. Jonas relates that the Irish missionary Columbanus, traveling from Luxeuil, visited Chagneric’s home about 610 and blessed the children, setting Burgundofara apart for God. Later tradition, drawing on Jonas and on subsequent hagiography, states that her father afterward intended her for marriage; she resisted, fell seriously ill, and recovered after the intervention of Eustasius, abbot of Luxeuil, and after her father agreed that she might follow a monastic life. She was consecrated as a virgin and established a monastery on a family estate known as Eboriacum or Evoriacum. The house took her name and became Faremoutiers, that is, Fara’s monastery.

Under her rule the community was a double monastery of women and men, living according to the austere Irish-inspired Rule of Saint Columbanus that Luxeuil had spread through Francia. In later generations such houses often adopted or combined that observance with the Rule of Saint Benedict, and Burgundofara is frequently listed among Benedictine abbesses, though the Columbanian character of the foundation in her own lifetime is the better-attested fact. She governed Faremoutiers for many years. The monastery acquired land and prestige; a testament in her name, dated to the early 630s, is among the documentary remains of Merovingian monastic endowment and kinship. In the following decades Faremoutiers was known in England: Bede reports that royal women of Kent and East Anglia, among them Saethryth, Ethelburga, and Eorcengota, entered the community and that some died there.

The precise year of Burgundofara’s death is not securely established. Jonas’s Life treats her as alive around 643; liturgical tradition commemorates her on 3 April, and later notices propose mid-seventh-century years such as 655 or 657. She was buried at Faremoutiers. Veneration of her as a virgin and abbess remained local and monastic before entering wider martyrologies. Modern knowledge of her life depends on Jonas of Bobbio, on the testament associated with her, on Bede’s remarks about Faremoutiers, and on later medieval legend, which should not be pressed for details the seventh-century sources do not supply.