St. Philibert

Feastday: August 20
Birth: 608
Death: 684

Benedictine abbot and bishop. Born in Gascony, France, he was raised and educated in the court of King Dagobert I of the Franks where he fell under the influence of St. Quen and became a monk at Rebais Abbey. Subsequently elected abbot, he resigned the post after a disagreement with some of the monks, and he wandered to other monastic houses. He founded the monastery of Jumieges, in Neustria, near Fontenelle, France, in 654 and served as its abbot. After censuring Ebroin, mayor of the palace to the Frankish king, he was imprisoned and then exiled to Herio Island off the coast of Poitou. During this period, he founded the abbey of Noirmoutier, rebuilt Qincay Abbey, near Poitiers, and gave his wisdom to several other communities.

Statue of Saint Philibert.

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (March 2017) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the French article. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 4,049 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Philibert de Tournus]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|fr|Philibert de Tournus}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (March 2017) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Spanish article. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 4,352 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at [[:es:Filiberto de Tournus]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|es|Filiberto de Tournus}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Philibert of Jumièges" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Saint Philibert of Jumièges (c. 608–684) was an abbot and monastic founder, particularly associated with Jumièges Abbey.

He was born in Gascony as the only son of a Vic or Vic-Jour (now Vic-Fezensac) based courtier of Dagobert I and was educated by Saint Ouen. He later entered the monastery of Rebais as a monk, and was promoted to abbot, but his inexperience was too great for the position. He left and spent some time travelling round monasteries studying their Rules and constitutions.

In 654, Philibert received a gift of land from Clovis II on which he founded Jumièges Abbey. He drew up a Rule based on his studies for this and for his later foundations, drawing on several earlier Rules, including those of Benedict, Macarius, Basil the Great and particularly the strict rule of Columbanus. The monks' chief work was the reclaiming of waste lands.

For a time Philibert lost the favour of Ouen and the royal family, and was exiled. He withdrew to Poitiers and near Heriou founded the monastery of Noirmoutier, whereupon Ansoald, bishop of Poitiers, put his own foundation of Luçon Abbey under Philibert's charge as well. When he regained the favour of his patrons, he founded other houses, including the monastery of Cunaut and the nunnery at Pavilly.

Philibert died and was buried at Heriou, but in 836 the monks of Noirmoutier abandoned their home in the face of the Viking attacks to seek refuge on the mainland, in 875 finally settling with the relics of Philibert in the abbey at Tournus named in his honour, where the great church of St Philibert at Tournus still stands. His feast day is 20 August. The filbert, or hazelnut, is said to have been named after him, since it ripens about August 20 in England.