St. Leonard of Noblac

Who they were

Leonard is a saint whose history and whose legend have to be told apart, so the frame comes first. He was a Frankish hermit of the sixth century whose documented history is thin, since the surviving life of him was written centuries later, and whose cult was among the mightiest of the entire Middle Ages, which is itself a historical fact worth taking seriously.

The tradition runs like this: a noble convert of the court of Clovis refused a bishopric for a hermitage at Noblac near Limoges, aided the queen through a dangerous childbirth, which is his second and quieter patronage, and was granted by the king the release of any prisoner he visited. From that grant grew the devotion that made him. For centuries captives across Europe, including crusaders freed from captivity, most famously Bohemond of Antioch, invoked Leonard, reported their chains opened, and walked to Noblac to hang the irons at his shrine, where medieval inventories recorded them by the ton. Whatever a historian keeps of the sixth century, the iron was real, and it is allowed to testify.

Why people turn to St. Leonard of Noblac

Prisoners and their families, with St. Dismas, St. Joseph Cafasso and St. Maximilian Kolbe. Prison ministry volunteers have their ancient patron here. Expectant mothers in danger keep the older, gentler claim, beside St. Gerard Majella and St. Raymond Nonnatus.

How to ask their intercession

For someone inside, by name: the sentence, the appeal, the reentry. And the chain image is the prayer. Name the thing that has you chained, and ask him for his old specialty.