Theobald of Provins

Theobald of Provins (in French Thibaut, Thibault) was a French hermit and saint, born in 1033 at Provins and reposed on 30 June 1066 at Sossano, near Vicenza in Italy. He is the patron of charcoal-⁠burners. The Roman Catholic Church canonized him in 1073, through Pope Alexander II, and remembers him on 30 June.

He was of the nobility, son of Arnoul, count of Champagne, and bore the name of his uncle, Theobald of Vienne, also considered a saint. From youth he admired the lives of hermits, of Saint John the Baptist, Saint Paul the First Hermit, Saint Anthony the Great and Arsenius the Great, and he would visit a hermit named Burchard who lived on an island in the Seine. He refused to marry or to begin a career in the army or at court. When war broke out between his cousin Odo II, count of Blois, and Conrad the Salic for the Burgundian crown, he refused to lead troops and managed to persuade his father to let him become a hermit.

He left home with a friend named Walter to become a hermit at Suxy in the Ardennes, then they went to Pettingen, where they worked as day laborers. Together they made the pilgrimage on the Way of Saint James, returned to the diocese of Trier and made a pilgrimage to Rome, planning to go next by way of Venice to the Holy Land. Walter fell ill near Salanigo, close to Vicenza, and there they settled. After Walter died, Theobald joined a group of hermits gathered there under the guidance of the founder of the Camaldolese, Romuald. The bishop of Vicenza ordained him a priest. His background was soon discovered, and his parents came to visit him. His mother, Gisela, received her husband's permission to stay with her son and became a hermit herself nearby. Theobald died of an illness in which every limb was covered with blotches and ulcers. Shortly before he died he made his monastic profession before the prior of his Camaldolese community.

His relics were moved to a monastery near Sens and then to Auxerre, to the priory of Saint-⁠Thibault-⁠en-⁠Auxois. His veneration is centered on Provins and Saint-⁠Thibault-⁠en-⁠Auxois, and a part of the relics is kept in a reliquary in the hermitage and chapel of Saint-⁠Thibaut in Belgium. Many miracles of his are told, some before and some after his death.

He died in 1066, after the separation of the Churches in 1054; he is a saint of the West, with no Orthodox synodal canonization.