Wenilo of Sens

Wenilo (died 865) was the archbishop of Sens from 836 or 837. Prior to becoming bishop, Wenilo was a palatine chaplain. As bishop, he was one of the leading men in Aquitaine and crowned Charles the Bald king in 848, definitively uniting Aquitaine with West Francia. In 858, he supported the East Frankish invasion and was denounced as a traitor by the king. He reconciled the next year, and retained his office until his death. Nevertheless, Wenilo passed into legend as Ganelon, the archvillain of the Matter of France, his name a byword for "traitor".

Wenilo was a chaplain at the court of Charles the Bald before his appointment to the archbishopric. At his subsequent trial for treason, Charles reminded the assembled bishops how

a part of the realm was assigned me by my lord and father ... and in it the metropolitan see of Sens then lacked a pastor. For its good government, I commended it to Wenilo, who was at that time serving me as a clerk in my chapel.

When Charles's father, the Emperor Louis the Pious, died in 840, civil war broke out between Charles and his brothers, Lothair I and Louis the German. Wenilo supported Charles, allowing him to appoint his own choice of abbot at Fleury and at Ferrières. The new abbot of the latter, Lupus, had a personal correspondence with Wenilo. Wenilo was also the recipient of the Epistola tractoria ad Wenilonem by Prudentius of Troyes, whom he knew from the court of Louis the Pious in the 830s.

In June 845, Wenilo and his suffragans, alongside the archbishops Hincmar of Reims and Rodulf of Bourges and their suffragans, attended a great assembly at Meaux to advise the "most devout prince" Charles. On 25 March 848, while celebrating Easter in Limoges, the magnates and prelates of the Kingdom of Aquitaine formally elected Charles the Bald as their king. He was consecrated there in May. Later, at Orléans, he was anointed and crowned by Wenilo of Sens. The initiative in this ceremony perhaps came from Hincmar of Reims, who had been consecrated by Wenilo, and who composed several liturgies for coronations and anointings.

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