Aldo eremita

Who they were

According to tradition, the hermit Aldo lived at some uncertain time between the 8th and 11th centuries and was a charcoal burner who chose the 'withdrawn' life, most likely in the form Saint Columbanus brought to Bobbio, where Irish monasticism combined a private cell for each monk with some shared community life and daily manual work. Little is known of him — not even his birthplace or birth date — beyond the antiquity of his veneration and his burial place at Pavia, first in the chapel of San Colombano and later moved to the basilica of San Michele, once capital of the Lombard kingdom.

An old tradition places him as a charcoal burner and hermit near Pavia, at a place called Carbonaria; his inclusion in the martyrologies of the Benedictine Order has led to the supposition that he was a monk at Bobbio, the monastery founded by Saint Columbanus in 614. His name, from the Lombard word 'ald' meaning 'old' or 'wise', suggests he may have had Lombard blood.

The miracles

There was never a formal cause: he has been honoured as a saint since before the Church's formal processes began.

Why that counted as sanctity

Hermit and former charcoal burner near Pavia, buried at San Colombano then San Michele in Pavia; feast 10 January.