Peaceful beginnings
The St Leger Stakes, the oldest of British horse racing’s classic races, is named after Anthony St Leger, an 18th-century MP and soldier. And his family name, in turn, is ultimately owed to St Leodegar, a bishop and martyr born in the Somme region in 615.
Leodegar’s background placed him close to politics and public affairs, which would eventually lead to his death.
The son of a Burgundian nobleman, he grew up at the court of Clotaire, king of the Franks. This king, unusually peace-loving and monogamous for his time and era, had achieved a measure of unity among the Franks. But soon after Leodegar became a priest, then abbot of a monastery in Poitou, conflict broke out again between the various Frankish factions.
A reforming bishop
In 656, St Bathilde, the queen of the Frankish kingdoms, called him to help in government.
He was soon appointed bishop of Autun, and was zealous in the cause of orthodoxy. He condemned Manicheism and promulgated the Athanasian Creed, the fullest statement yet of beliefs necessary for salvation.
He also reformed the clergy and expanded the diocese’s pastoral work and its mission to the sick.
Torture and death
By 673, the kingdom was increasingly under the sway of the almost cartoonishly villainous mayor of the palace of Neustria, a man called Ebroin. Leodegar and the other bishops helped see off Ebroin’s preferred candidate for king; they installed Childeric II.
For a while Leodegar guided the king, but they fell out after Leodegar protested against Childeric’s marriage to a first cousin. The bishop was sent away.
When he returned in 675, after the king’s murder, Ebroin emerged victorious from another bloody power struggle. Leodegar was out of favour. In 679 Ebroin’s allies attacked Autun to save the town, and the bishop gave himself up. His eyes and tongue were cut out (a scene depicted above), then he was given a show trial and summarily executed.
Ebroin’s rule did not last long. Having lived by the sword, he was himself assassinated a few years later. A devotion grew up around Leodegar’s relics. In the mid-15th century his feast day was for a time made a holy day of obligation.
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