Join me today to meet the wandering prince who became a patron saint of pilgrims.
Name: Jodocus, Judoc, Josse
Life: c. 600 - c. 668 AD
Status: Saint
Feast: December 13
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Jodocus turned the crown over and over in his hands. It was his by right, if he wanted it. And he did want it. For twenty years, he had ridden in his older brother’s warband, building the kingdom of Domnonia in Brittany, on the West coast of modern France. Now it was his turn to rule. And yet, Jodocus hesitated. For eight days, he went back and forth, wondering about the right thing to do. He prayed. His older brother’s example suggested that there was another life available to him, something better than the life of a king.
Jodocus’ agony of decision will only make sense to us if we jump back in time from that decision point. We need to begin our story earlier, centuries earlier, in the blood and fire of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England, when Jodocus’ people had made the fateful decision to leave their homes and settle in this place.
Once, the people we call Bretons had been Britons, the Celtic inhabitants of England. In the 5th century, as Rome tottered and fell, waves of barbarian invaders came to England, and Angles and Saxons carved out kingdoms for themselves. Some of the Britons fought back, led, so some said, by King Arthur. Other Britons fled.
Jodocus’ ancestors, curiously enough, had both fled and fought. They fled to the Western tip of modern France. Once there, they had helped those still at home by trying to secure to coastlines, to cut off the Saxon pirates from the coasts they needed to launch their raids. Jodocus’ ancestors had kept such close ties to the place they had come from that they hadn’t even bothered to give their new home a new name. They came from Domnonia, in modern Devon, and their new home in Brittany became Domnonia as well.
The Bretons were Christians. And yet their faith was shaped by the Celtic picture of the world. For example, the Church taught that the souls of the faithful departed go to be with God. Old Celtic wisdom explained how this happened. The souls were gathered up on the night boat, that silent ship that you can just spot sometimes on the horizon, but which you can never get close to. The night boat was headed far into the West, to the island of paradise, which few living men ever see. But it was there, sure enough, Saint Brendan had found it, long ago.
In time, the invasion of England slowed down. The Celtic kingdoms in the West of France grew. The Bretons found new enemies to fight - sometimes these enemies were other Bretons. And in the East, the tribe of the Franks grew and grew in power.
As Jodocus was growing up, there had been trouble in Domnonia. Jodocus’ father had been king. He had a huge number of children, thirteen boys among them. Jodocus was the second son, and so the next king should have been his elder brother, Judicaël. But Judicaël’s role had been usurped, so one story goes, and as a result the rightful king was forced to go and live in a monastery.
I have to imagine that, for years, as he was forced to live as a monk, Judicaël raged at the thought of his stolen kingdom. But as the years passed, the monastery began to change him. Judicaël went from a reluctant monk to a sincere one. And when one day the usurper king fell from power and the people demanded that Judicaël come and be their king, Judicaël took up his birthright with reluctance.
Even though Judicaël was a reluctant king, he was a very effective one. For the next twenty years, he ruled Domnonia with strength and justice - and prepared his younger brother Jodocus to rule after him. Jodocus served his brother, the king, in a war that would bring the other kingdoms of Brittany under the control of Domnonia. It was all part of Judicaël’s plan, which was that once unified, the Bretons could negotiate their freedom with the mighty Franks in the East. So now, Judicaël was not only king, but high king over the Bretons.
Around 635, Judicaël’s policies paid off. He went to negotiate a peace deal with the king of the Franks, Dagobert I.
We don’t know the details of the deal, but we do know that Brittany would remain functionally independent for a long time. We also know that Judicaël almost blew up his negotiations by snubbing the corrupt court of King Dagobert. The way Judicaël saw it, negotiating with Dagobert was one thing, but feasting with him was another. Dagobert was furious - but perhaps also a little impressed, as was the author of the Chronicle of Fredegar, who explains that Judicaël feared God more than he feared Dagobert.
The treaty with the Franks seems to have been a milestone for Judicaël. He had put his lands in order, inside and out. Now he wanted to return to the simple life of a monk, where he would find his own path to sainthood. And so he offered the crown to his younger brother, who had spent the last twenty years learning and watching: Jodocus.
Why, then, did Jodocus struggle with this decision? Why not just take the crown and become the best king he could be? Perhaps the answer lies in the old, Indo-European idea that there are three kinds of lives available to a man. The Celts knew it, as did the Saxons and the Franks - indeed, the idea was already ancient by the time Plato spun a myth around it in his great book, the Republic. In Plato’s myth, there are three sorts of people, each symbolized by a metal. Some people have bronze souls, and their destiny is to do productive work. Others have silver souls, and their destiny is to defend their society. And still others have golden souls. These are the Indo-European priestly class, though Plato paints them as philosophers, pursuing the True, the Good and the Beautiful. For a long, long time, everyone had said that the life of one of these golden spiritual leaders is the highest life available to a man.
And yet - as we also see in Plato - many people had their doubts. Was there really any better life than the silver life of a powerful king, of a man who had the power of life and death over those around him? That is the question that kicks off the discussion in Plato’s Republic.
Now Jodocus was facing this ancient question. If Jodocus became king, he couldn’t say - like his brother before him - that he was doing it to fix the kingdom. The kingdom was in great shape. Jodocus also couldn’t say that he was doing it to preserve the claim of his family. If he didn’t want the job, there were eleven brothers waiting to take it. Jodocus could make a free choice without failing in his duty. And so he ended up facing Plato’s question, whether the life of a holy man is better than the life of a strong man.
In the end, Jodocus had a little bit of help in making the decision. After eight days of thinking, a group of pilgrims passed through the city, headed West to Paris and then to Rome. There were eleven of them. Jodocus’ life would be filled with symbolism, and now it struck Jodocus that if these pilgrims were to be like the followers of Jesus, they needed one more. It was obvious to Jodocus who that last pilgrim should be. And so, Jodocus dropped the crown, and hurried to catch up with the pilgrims.
Jodocus followed the pilgrims to Paris. They were headed on, to Rome, but Jodocus felt called to stop in the lands belonging to a duke named Haymon. The duke was impressed by the pilgrim, and the friendship that emerged between the two men took on the structure of the old hierarchy. The rich duke treated the poor pilgrim with honour. He was so impressed with Jodocus’ new life, that the duke asked him to stay, to study for the priesthood, and to become his chaplain. And for a time, this is what Jodocus did.
As time passed, though, Jodocus felt called to a monastic life. Again, Duke Haymon made it possible, allowing Jodocus to settle as a hermit on the river at Rhay sur Authie, a little north of Abbeville in the North of modern France. That way Jodocus could still be Haymon’s advisor, and live under his protection. In time, Jodocus was joined by a young man who felt a similar vocation, and the two hermits lived out on the river. Writing Jodocus’ life, the medieval scholar Jean Miélot describes a place of peace, a little island where even the fish schooled together and the birds sat in the trees and watched as the holy man went about his business. Although, in the way of the middle ages, Miélot puts it a little differently:
Animals, that are by nature fell and cruel, forgot their pride and became friendly to the saintly man, and became accustomed to approaching people, a natural marvel. (My translation)
One story from this time in Jodocus’ life has him and his student running out of food. They are down to just a small loaf of bread. A beggar comes by, and Jodocus breaks the loaf in half: half for the beggar, half for them. The hungry student sorrowfully watches the half loaf disappear. Then, another beggar comes to the hermitage, and Jodocus divides the bread again: a quarter for the beggar, a quarter for himself and his student. Finally, a third beggar comes to the hermitage, and Jodocus gives him the remaining quarter piece of bread. The student, appalled, asks what they are going to eat. Jodocus says he hadn’t really thought about it. That is up to God, and God can provide, if He wills. The student grumbles and worries until, to his shock, villagers show up with baskets of food, which they just happen to have prepared for the hermits on that day.
Then, something happened that broke the peacefulness of the hermitage. Tradition has it that Jodocus was bitten by a snake, though even his biographers treat this as symbolic as much as anything else. We might guess, given what was to happen next, that the hermit and the duke had a falling out. That instead of following the spiritual guidance of the hermit, the duke had decided to go his own way. At any rate, Jodocus went South, to Rugny, past Paris and into the centre of modern France, to live as a hermit in a place where he had no friends.
Years passed. Now Jodocus was growing old. He had spent half his life as a prince, and half as a poor hermit. And it was at this time that he felt called to complete the pilgrimage he had started so long ago, and finally go to Rome. The old hermit put his affairs in order, and set off alone, down from France through Italy, on the long, dangerous road to the great city.
In Rome, so the story goes, the pope recognized something unusual in the old pilgrim priest. He received Jodocus with honour. And when it came time for Jodocus to leave, the Pope gave him gifts: relics of the saints who had come before. Jodocus didn’t really have any place to take these relics, but it seemed to him that he would know the place when he got there. And so, laden with relics that Northern Europe would sorely need in the tumultuous centuries ahead, Jodocus set out back North.
He followed the road that seemed best to him, and in time Jodocus found himself back in the lands of Duke Haymon. I imagine Jodocus reluctant to return. But when he arrived, he found that the duke had been preparing for him. In hope, perhaps in repentance, the duke had built a great church. It was standing empty, waiting for Jodocus. Jodocus filled the church with relics, and spent his final years there, leading not only the duke, but also his people as a spiritual leader. In time, the old Breton died, and miracles were reported by those who sought his intercession.
Saint Jodocus, the pilgrim prince, would become one of Europe’s most beloved saints. To see why, I think we have to understand his life as a model in which the three kinds of men work together. Jodocus leaves a silver life to live a golden life. Duke Haymon takes his place as a protector of the saint, and a leader of his people, when he builds a church for Saint Jodocus. This was a little image of Christendom, of Christendom as it should be, and sometimes could be, a place where the wealthy and powerful left their palaces to seek the help of poor and holy men with souls of gold.
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this is excellent. thank you!
Awsome work!
Thank you for sharing these beautiful stories of such models of men.
I hope it's not too much to ask. Could you share the bibliography used to compose the texts so that we could deepen the knowledge about the matter?