Celina of Laon

Wife of Emilius, count of Laon, she is the mother of Remigius, the bishop who would baptise Clovis. She is also given as the mother of Agricola and of Principius, twelfth bishop of Soissons. That is about all the sources allow one to assert. The rest is a birth legend: a blind hermit named Montanus is said to have told Celina, already old, that she would bear a son who would deliver his people, and to have asked her to send him milk from her breast to recover his sight — which happened. The account is of the sixth century at the earliest, written when Remigius was already a national glory, and it follows a well-known biblical pattern, that of barren mothers. What it may preserve of truth is a Christian Gallo-Roman family of the Laonnois where bishops were bred. She was buried at Lavergny, near Laon, where she is venerated.