Feastday: January 4
Death: 743
Benedictine archbishop, also known as Robert of Reims. After serving for a time as abbot of Orbais, he was appointed archbishop of Reims, France. As a result of a dispute with Charles Martel, the powerful Frankish mayor of the palace, he was banished and the see was bestowed upon the prelate Muon. When the matter was resolved and Rigobert returned to Reims, he chose not to pursue his rightful claim to the see and instead became a hermit. Rigobert was long venerated as a model of patience and was credited with many miracles.
For other people named Rigobert, see Rigobert (name).Saint Rigobert (died 743) was a Benedictine monk and later abbot at Orbais who subsequently succeeded Saint Rieul as bishop of Reims in 698.
Rigobert baptized Charles Martel, but Charles afterwards had him brutally driven from the see and replaced, for political reasons, by the warlike and unpriestly Milo, who was already Archbishop of Trier. Rigobert took refuge in Aquitaine and then retired to Gernicourt, in the Diocese of Soissons, where he led a life in the exercises of penance and prayer.
He died about the year 743, and was buried in the church of Saint Peter at Gernicourt, which he had built. Hincmar translated his relics to the abbey of Saint Theodoric, and later, to the church of Saint Dionysius at Reims. Fulk, Hincmar's successor, removed them into the metropolitan Church of Our Lady of Reims, in which the greater part is preserved in a rich shrine, though a portion is kept in the church of Saint Dionysius at Reims, and another portion in the cathedral of Paris, where a chapel bears his name.
His feast day is 4 January.
