Romanus of Condat

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Saint Romanus of Condat
Born	~390 AD, Upper Bugey
Died	~460 AD
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church
Feast	28 February
Patronage	drowning victims, insanity, mental illness, mentally ill people
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Saint Romanus of Condat (ca. 390—ca. 463) is a saint of the fifth century. At the age of thirty five he decided to live as a hermit in the area of Condat. His younger brother Lupicinus followed him there. They became leaders of a community of monks that included Saint Eugendus.

Romanus and Lupicinus founded several monasteries. These included Condat Abbey, which was the nucleus of the later town of Saint-Claude, Jura), Lauconne (later Saint-Lupicin, as Lupicinus was buried there), La Balme (Beaume) (later Saint-Romain-de-Roche), where Romanus was buried, and Romainmôtier (Romanum monasterium) in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland.

Romanus was ordained a priest by St. Hilary of Arles in 444.

[edit] Sources on Romanus

Two lives of him are in existence: one by Gregory of Tours in the Liber vitae patrum (Mon. Germ. Hist.: Script. Merov., I, 663), and an anonymous Vita Sanctorum Romani, Lupicini, Eugendi [ibid., III, 131 sqq.; cf. Benoît, "Histoire de St-Claude", I (Paris, 1890); Besson, "Recherches sur les origines des évêchés de Genève, Lausanne, et Sion" (Fribourg, 1906), 210 sqq.].