Sigiramnus

Who was Sigiramnus?

Saint Sigiramnus was an abbot and confessor of the 7th century. A nobleman of Berry, he studied at Tours and then joined the royal court of Clothaire II. He served as cup-bearer but always wore a hair-shirt underneath his garments, devoting himself to prayer.

His father, count of Bourges, wanted Sigiramnus to marry the daughter of a nobleman.

Refusing to marry, Sigiramnus took holy orders at the church of St. Martin at Tours in 625 AD, serving as archdeacon at Tours. He refused to gain high position in the secular world, and after his father died, he gave away his goods and money to the poor; he was locked away as a lunatic for this.

In 640, after he was released, he made a pilgrimage to Rome with Flavius, an Irish bishop. According to one account, as they crossed the diocese of Tours, he insisting on working in the fields with the serfs after he was “seized with compassion at the peasants covered with dust and sweat.”

When Sigiramnus returned to France, he founded two monasteries with land given to him by Clothaire in the diocese of Bourges: Saint-Pierre de Longoret and Méobecq, in the forest of Brenne.