Saint-Bertin

Bertin the Great
Statue of St. Bertin before the ruins of his former abbey
Abbot
Born	c. 615 Constance, Duchy of Alamannia, Frankish Kingdom
Died	c. 709 Abbey of Saint Bertin, Saint-Omer, Frankish Kingdom
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church (Diocese of Arras)
Major shrine	Abbey of St. Bertin
Feast	5 September

Bertin (c. 615 – c. 709), also known as Saint Bertin the Great, was the Frankish abbot of a monastery in Saint-Omer later named the Abbey of Saint Bertin after him. He is honored as a saint by Catholic Church.

Bertin was born near Constance, then in the Frankish Duchy of Alamannia. At an early age, he entered the Abbey of Luxeuil, where, under the austere rule of its abbot, Columbanus, he prepared himself for a future missionary career. About the year 638 he set out, in company with two confrères, Mummolin and Ebertram, for the extreme northern part of France in order to assist his friend and kinsman, Bishop Omer, in the evangelization of the Morini. This country, now in the Department of Pas-de-Calais, was then one vast marsh, studded here and there with hillocks and overgrown with seaweed and bulrushes. On one of these hillocks, Bertin and his companions built a small house and they went out daily to preach the Christian faith to the natives, most of whom were still pagans.

Gradually some converted pagans joined the little band of missionaries and a larger monastery had to be built. A tract of land called Sithiu had been donated to Omer by a converted nobleman named Adrowald. Omer now turned this whole tract over to the missionaries, who selected a suitable place on it for their new Abbey of St. Peter. Additional villages were granted by Count Waldebert, later a monk at Bertin's monastery of Sythiu and eventually Abbot of Luxueil and canonized, who gave his son at the baptismal font to Bertin, from whom the boy received his name and his education. The community grew so rapidly that in a short time this monastery also became too small and another was built where the city of St. Omer now stands.