saint Viatre

Who they were

Viator was a hermit who lived in the 6th century in the wooded, marshy Sologne region of central France. Little is certainly known of his life, but tradition, developed from the 9th century by the monks of Micy abbey, holds that he entered religious life as a youth, trained at the abbey of Saint-Mesmin de Micy, and formed a close friendship there with the monk Avitus.

Seeking deeper solitude, Viator withdrew as a hermit to the village of Tremblevif in the Sologne, living a life of prayer, fasting and manual work, and became a spiritual point of reference for the local people. As death approached he is said to have carved his own coffin from an aspen trunk; he was buried in the local church, and the town, now called Saint-Viâtre, still keeps his name and relics. His feast is 5 August.

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 of the Sologne near Tremblevif, France, in the 6th century; feast 5 August in the Roman Martyrology.