Leonard of Corbigny
medieval Frankish confessor and saint
Feast: 15 October (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
Who they were
Leonard of Vandoeuvre went into Maine in search of solitude and settled on the Sarthe, at what is now Saint-Léonard-des-Bois, bringing monastic life to that valley. Befriended by St Innocent, bishop of Le Mans, he soon had many followers.
Enemies told King Clotaire I that he was drawing the king's men away from their service; the king's envoys arrived just as a young noble was giving up his estate to become a monk, but Leonard answered that he only taught Christ's call to leave everything. Clotaire later became his patron. He died very old, in the arms of St Domnolus, about 570.
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
A sixth-century abbot who founded monastic life in the valley of the Sarthe.
- Butler's Lives of the Saints, ed. Thurston and Attwater (1956), vol. IV - 15 October
- Wikidata Q138859390 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
Checked against the sources listed on 22 September 2026. Corrections welcome.