Geremarus

Saint Geremarus (Germer) was a Frankish nobleman who became a monk and founded the monastery of Flay, later called Saint-⁠Germer, between Beauvais and Rouen. He reposed around 658. The oldest account of his life was composed in the ninth century and revised three centuries later, so its accuracy is doubtful.

He was born around 608 at Vardes near Beauvais, of a noble family, and served at the court of the Merovingian kings Dagobert I and Clovis II. He married a pious woman, Domana, and of their children the youngest, Amalberga, is honoured as a saint. On the advice of Audoin (Ouen) he built a monastery on the Epte, and then, with his wife's consent, he entered the monastery of Pentale, where he became abbot. The monks did not want to live by the rule, so he left the leadership and lived five years as a hermit in a cave near the Seine.

In 655 he founded the monastery of Flay, where he gathered a community of zealous monks, and he reposed some three years later, as its abbot. He is commemorated on 24 September, as a saint of the undivided Church, by the New Calendar.