Gondelbert

Saint Gondelbert (also Gundebert, Gumbert, Gombert) was the founder of the Benedictine abbey of Senones, in the Rabodeau valley of the Vosges mountains. His death is placed around the year 676. He is a saint venerated in the Catholic Church, and his commemoration is on 21 February.

His life was written by a certain Richer, a monk of Senones, some centuries after him: one source says three centuries later, another that Richer of Lorraine wrote it in the middle of the thirteenth century. According to the tradition of the abbey, which dates from the eleventh century, Gondelbert had been archbishop of Sens before founding the abbey. The sources disagree about the date: one says he founded it around 640, another around 660, with a grant of King Childeric II in 661, who gave the Val de Senones to Gumbertus episcopus. Gondelbert left the see of Sens for the life of a hermit in the Vosges mountains and gave the abbey the name of the diocese of Sens (Senonis in Latin).

Childeric II, king of Austrasia, gave the valley, a generous gift but also one that served himself. It pleased him thus to oblige a man of God and to favour the spread of the Christian faith in that region, but he also knew that the founding of an abbey would open a centre of civilization in the most deprived part of his kingdom.

Gondelbert's first care was to give his community a church, dedicated to Our Lady. Later the monastic buildings grew, placed under the patronage of Saint Peter. The community followed the Rule of Saint Benedict. He was the confessor of Saint Itta of Metz and is credited with building the first church in Itteville. He died around 676 on a pilgrimage to Moyenvic. The parish church of Senones bears his name.