Waningus

Saint Waningus (Vaneng) was a Merovingian count and royal official under King Clotaire III. He helped Saint Wandrille to found Fontenelle Abbey, and afterward he founded Fécamp Abbey. He departed to the Lord about the year 683. The sources disagree about his day of commemoration: a Russian source gives 9 January, an English one 18 December.

He was born at Rouen and was governor of the Pays de Caux in Neustria. He was pious but also fond of hunting. He had a particular devotion to Saint Eulalia (called Aulaire in the English source). One night he dreamed that she reminded him of the difficulty with which the rich enter heaven. Around 648 he withdrew from court to help Wandrille found Fontenelle Abbey, helping to endow it. Fontenelle followed the Rule of Saint Columbanus. According to some sources he became a monk.

About ten years later, after recovering from a serious illness, Waningus founded the church of the Holy Trinity and the adjoining convent of nuns, the Holy Trinity of Fécamp. About 675 the blinded bishop Leodegar was sent to Fécamp, where the nuns cared for him tenderly, until in October 678 he was taken away at the order of the mayor of the palace, Ebroin, and murdered.

The relics of Waningus were moved from Fécamp in the ninth century to the Augustinian house at Ham; according to the English source they are now at Ghent, in Belgium. His son Desiderius was entrusted to the abbot of Fontenelle for education, became a monk there and died around 700; he too is counted a saint.