Saint Loup de Bayeux, known in Latin as Lupus Baiocensis and sometimes called Saint Leu, was born in Bayeux and raised in paganism during the turbulent fifth century in Gaul. He was converted to the Christian faith by Rufinien, the third bishop of Bayeux, who then conferred upon him the order of deacon.
When the see fell vacant, the clergy and faithful of Bayeux elected him bishop per saltum—that is, before he had been ordained a priest. According to tradition, a child who had not yet spoken pointed him out as the one chosen, after which Sylvester, archbishop of Rouen, conferred the episcopal anointing. Loup thus became bishop of Bayeux around the year 440 and governed the diocese for some thirty-two years amid the decline of Roman authority and the pressures of invasion and social change.
He fulfilled the duties of his ministry with care, assisted by a priest named Aufiac. Local tradition recounts that a monstrous wolf living in a nearby wood terrorized the city of Bayeux. Saint Loup confronted the beast and killed it by casting it into the river Drôme at the place now called Saint-Loup-Hors, just outside the gates of Bayeux. He is also said to have restored sight to two blind men.
Saint Loup died on 25 October 461 (some chronicles place the year between 464 and 474). He was buried in the church of Saint-Exupère in Bayeux. In 863, during Norman incursions, his body together with that of Saint Exupère was taken for safety to the castle of Palluau in the Gâtinais. The relics were later kept at the abbey of Cormery in Touraine and, from about the year 1000, in the cathedral of Saint-Spire at Corbeil beside those of the first bishop of Bayeux. In 1793 the revolutionaries cast them into the Seine. The Church keeps his memory on 25 October (and also on 28 May in some local calendars).
May Saint Loup de Bayeux intercede for us, that we may practice courageous pastoral fidelity amid the trials of our own day.
