ST ROMANUS, BISHOP OF ROUEN - 23 OCTOBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN OCTOBER

Saints celebrated on the 23rd of October

 Prayer to the Angels and the Saints

Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.

In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.

Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.

Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.

ST ROMANUS, BISHOP OF ROUEN 

St Romanus

This holy Bishop of Rouen (Rotomagus)was elected around the year 626. He was the twentieth Bishop of Rouen. He was full of faith and zeal, and brave fighter against idolatry and pagan superstition. This is why he appears in illustrations as a dragon slayer. 

According to the legend depicted on a painting in the Godhard Church, a dragon lived in the vicinity of the town, devastating and terrifying everything and everybody near and far. 

St Romanus decided to fight him in the name of Jesus Christ and went to his cave, accompanied by two criminals who had forfeited their lives. There he threw his scapular around his neck, and one of the criminals, a murderer, killed the monster. The other, a thief, had meanwhile escaped. The dragon slayer, upon his heroic deed, was pardoned. 

Saint-Romain Street, Rouen,
by James Kay

The best-known biography of the saint was written in 1080 by Archdeacon Fulbert of Rouen. He was so famous and revered in his diocese that his name was used in the Confiteor as late as the last century. His father was a councilor to King Chlotaire I. He undertook studies befitting his status, but with much emphasis given to the pious aspects of education. I'm the year 626, the son succeeded the father in the same dignity under Chlotaire II.  

From the council chamber he ascended the bishop's chair. Nobody objected his promotion but himself. This is just as much proof of his piety and ecclesiastical attitude as of the trust that the king and his officials, the clergy and the people placed in him. 

Regarding his episcopal ministry his efforts to destroy the remnants of paganism, both in principle and in morals, stand out the most.

He destroyed four pagan temples, one of which (a temple of Venus) was in his episcopal city. He banished a terrible flood by blessing the river. This is alluded to in those illustrations which show him standing by the water with a cross in his hand. 

With constant prayers and mortifications he watched over his soul's salvation and that of his flock. His blessed death is placed between the years 638 and 644. 

Until the times of the great revolution, a procession was held every year, in which a dragon (called a garguille in Rouen) was carried about. The main altar of the Church of St Godhard encloses his relics since A.D. 1802. In the 11th century they had been transferred to the cathedral. The valuable shrine in which they were formerly located (la fierté de saint Romain) was destroyed and burned by the Calvinists (Huguenots) in A. D. 1562. 

In ancient times the cathedral chapter of Rouen had the privilege, confirmed by the dukes of Normandy and several French kings, of pardoning a murderer on the feast of the Ascension. The freedman was then allowed to carry the reliquary of the saint during the procession. This is where the legend mentioned at the beginning originated from. The holy Bishop is patron against madness. 

(Information from Stadler's Complete Encyclopedia of Saints, 1858)