Medardus of Noyon

Born around 456 at Salency in Picardy to a Frankish father and a Gallo-Roman mother, he was elected bishop of Vermand around 530 and moved his see to Noyon, the fortified town being safer than the open city in a time of invasions. Tradition credits him with founding the Rosière of Salency, which each year crowned the village's most deserving young woman with roses — a custom attested at least from the Middle Ages and kept up into the twentieth century. He died around 545, and Chlothar I raised over his tomb the abbey of Saint-Médard at Soissons, one of the most powerful in the Frankish kingdom. Legend tells that an eagle spread its wings above the boy when a storm caught him, leaving him alone dry among his drenched companions: from this comes his association with rain, and the forty-day proverb everyone knows without knowing who Medardus was.