Isarn of Saint-⁠Victor

Isarn of Saint-⁠Victor (also called Isarn of Marseille) was a Benedictine monk and abbot of the abbey of Saint-⁠Victor at Marseille in the first half of the 11th century. He was born, perhaps at Toulouse, at the end of the 10th century, and died at Marseille on 24 September 1048. He is remembered as a saint on 24 September.

According to tradition, he became abbot after the youngest of the pupils of the monastic school declared, spontaneously and in the name of Christ, that he was the one to be named abbot. In his abbacy he stood out for humility, austerity and gentleness in command, and for his charity to the needy. Under him the abbey of Saint-⁠Victor knew a great expansion and flowering of culture; its influence reached northern Italy, southern France and Catalonia.

Shortly before he died he went to Catalonia to pay the ransom of some monks of Lérins who had been taken prisoner by Saracen pirates. On the way back he died at Marseille. Saint Odilo of Cluny, his friend, said he knew no one so hypocritical as Isarn, for under the most ordinary appearance he hid the treasure of the greatest virtues and good works. His gravestone, in the crypt of Saint-⁠Victor, is a fine piece of Romanesque sculpture of the 11th century, with a long Latin epitaph.

He is a local saint of the West, from the time of the undivided Church; no Orthodox synodal canonization is known.