Germain of Paris

Saint Germain was bishop of Paris in the sixth century and is venerated in both the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Church. The Church remembers him as a monk and good shepherd, called the father of the poor, who worked for peace in a time of unending wars among the Frankish kings.

He was born around 496 near Autun in Burgundy, of noble Gallo-⁠Roman parents. He studied at Avallon and at Luzy under the guidance of his cousin, the priest Scallion. At about thirty-⁠five he was ordained priest by Agrippinus of Autun and became abbot of the nearby monastery of Saint Symphorian. He was hardworking and austere with himself, but his almsgiving was so generous that his monks feared that one day he would give away all the abbey's wealth, and they rose up against him.

In 555, after the death of Bishop Sibelius of Paris, King Childebert I had him made bishop of Paris. In the new see he continued the same monastic labours. He fought for the purity of the clergy's conduct, rebuked the sins of the great, worked to wipe out the remains of paganism in Gaul and to curb the excesses that accompanied Christian feasts. He took part in the third (557) and fourth (573) councils of Paris and in the second council of Tours (566). In 568 he had to excommunicate King Charibert for his immorality; Charibert died in 570.

When the surviving brothers fought over the inheritance, Germain tried without success to make peace. Sigebert and Chilperic, urged by their wives Brunhilda and Fredegund, went to war; Chilperic was defeated and Paris fell into Sigebert's hands. Germain wrote to Brunhilda asking her to restrain Sigebert from further fighting, but Sigebert set out against Chilperic at Tournai and was murdered in 575 on Fredegund's orders. The saint fell asleep on 28 May 576, before peace was restored.

In 542 King Childebert had besieged Zaragoza; hearing that the inhabitants had placed themselves under the protection of the martyr Vincent, he lifted the siege, and the city's bishop gave him Vincent's stole. Childebert built a church in Paris to receive the relic. Germain dedicated it on 23 December 558, the very day the king died. A monastery was founded beside it, later the famous abbey of Saint-⁠Germain-⁠des-⁠Prés, in whose chapel the saint was buried. In 756 his relics were moved into the main church, after a vision granted to a pious woman. The poet Venantius Fortunatus, who wrote his life (a string of miracles), says the saint performed his first miracle in his mother's womb. For nine centuries his relics were carried in procession through the streets of Paris in times of plague and distress. Tradition attributes to him a treatise on the Gallican liturgy. With Saint Geneviève and Saint Denis he is a patron of Paris. His name was added to the calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2017. His feast is on 28 May, and the translation of his relics on 25 July.