Biography
Laumer of Corbion
About Laumer of Corbion
Laumer, also called Lomer or Launomar, is remembered as the founder and abbot of Corbion in the Perche. His traditional biography describes a boy who tended his father’s sheep and was entrusted to Cherimir, a priest at Chartres, for education. After ordination, he cared for the community’s provisions before seeking a more secluded religious life. These episodes belong to the story handed down about him, rather than to a securely dated contemporary record.
In that tradition, solitude did not last. Companions gathered around him, and a community took shape in the forest. Laumer eventually established Corbion on land given by a wealthy benefactor. He remained its abbot until a final visit to Chartres, where the narrative places his death and burial. The familiar date of 593 is uncertain: even the modern Catholic account notes that the bishop named in the story lived substantially later.
The difficulty goes beyond choosing between two death years. Bernard Robreau’s study dates the earliest surviving Lives to the ninth century and warns that the evidence does not securely determine whether Laumer lived in the sixth or seventh century. He regards the foundation of Corbion as plausible, while treating the detailed chronology of the second Life with caution.
Robreau also distinguishes the traditional identification of Corbion with Moutiers-au-Perche from an alternative proposed site at Corbon. He favors Moutiers, drawing on its geographical setting, liturgical references and later monastic possessions. The supposed birthplace at Neuville-la-Mare is less secure: it is absent from the Carolingian Lives.
The survival of his cult is more tangible than many details of his lifetime. The Schøyen Collection describes manuscript 5577 as a group of ninth-century leaves containing chants, accounts of relic movements and miracles, and the end of a Life of Laumer. It links that final section with a manuscript now in the Vatican Library. The catalogue places the leaves around 873, partly because their account names a transfer of relics to Parigny in 872 without including the later move to Blois. The manuscript’s musical notation also preserves evidence of how his memory entered sung worship.
At Le Pas-Saint-l’Homer, the municipal history explicitly names Laumer as patron of the church. It describes a procession held near his January feast, carrying a staff surmounted by his image. A stone associated with the supposed imprint of his foot belongs to local legend, as does the connection between that footprint and prayers for relief from leg ailments.
A departmental church guide also records traditional patronage of Chartres and Blois, and invocation against fever.
His local feast is celebrated on 19 January.
Wondering how to weigh the stories and sources? Learn how to read a saint biography.