Ceraunus

Saint Ceraunus, also known as Céran, Cerauno, or Ceraunius, was a Frankish prelate who became the twenty-fifth Bishop of Paris about the year 606, succeeding Simplicius. He governed the Church of Paris for nearly twenty years under King Clotaire II, at the close of the long fratricidal struggles among the Merovingian kings that ended with Clotaire's recovery of the whole realm.

His episcopate was marked by pastoral care in the spirit of the first bishops of the primitive Church. He annexed a clerical school to the monastery of Saint-Vincent in Paris—later the famous abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés—where monks taught and from which Saint Bertram (Bertrand), later Bishop of Le Mans, went forth. Between 615 and 618 he served as intermediary in correspondence between Pope Adeodatus I and Queen Theodelinda of Bavaria, regent of the Lombard kingdom for her son Adaloald, as well as with the Frankish monarchy.

In 614, the year after the execution of Queen Brunhilda, Ceraunus took part in the Council of Paris held in the basilica of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul (later the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève). Seventy-eight or seventy-nine Frankish bishops assembled there and issued fifteen canons that restrained royal claims over episcopal elections, upheld the authority of bishops over the clergy, protected church property, and clarified the boundaries of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Before the council closed on 18 October 614, when the king promulgated the Edict of Clotaire II, Ceraunus carefully gathered from the assembled prelates the narratives of the lives of the holy martyrs.

Moved by special devotion to the martyrs, he compiled their Acts. From Warnahaire (Varnahair), a cleric of the cathedral of Langres, he received the Acts of the triple martyrs Speusippus, Eleusippus and Melapsippus (with Leonilla), whose relics had reached France and been placed in the cathedral of Langres, as well as the life of Saint Desiderius (Didier), Bishop of Langres. Ceraunus established the memory of Saint Desiderius in the cathedral of Paris (feast 17 January). Warnahaire's letter praised Ceraunus's virtues without reserve. The works Ceraunus composed on these martyrs are now lost.

The exact day of his death is unknown, yet he was no longer living in 625, when his successor Leudebert attended the Council of Reims; tradition places his death about 621. He was buried in the crypt of the basilica of the Apostles, to the left of Saint Genevieve of Paris. In 1253 his relics were translated and enshrined on an altar in the upper church, which had become the church of Sainte-Geneviève. In the High Middle Ages he was not yet widely named a saint; the first document to call him such is an eleventh- or twelfth-century addition to the martyrology of Saint Medericus. His body was exhumed, probably in the eleventh century, together with that of Saint Prudentius, to foster his cult, which remained modest; he was invoked against toothache. A drawing in the Gaignières collection shows his sarcophagus in a niche to the right of Genevieve's tomb. In the thirteenth century the remains were placed in a silver reliquary on the altar of Saint Clotilde. During the French Revolution in 1793 the relics of Saint Ceraunus, together with those of Saint Clotilde and Saint Alda, were burned by the abbot of Sainte-Geneviève to prevent profanation; the ashes are preserved in the church of Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles. A statue of Saint Céran by Louis Desprez stands in the church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, and a stained-glass window of the saint is found in Notre-Dame de Paris. He is honored as a saint by the Catholic Church and recognized in Orthodox tradition; his feast is kept on 27 September (sometimes noted as 26 September).

May Saint Ceraunus obtain for us a share in his devotion to the martyrs and his pastoral charity, that we may preserve the memory of the saints and serve the Church with the same humble zeal.