Barontus, St.

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BARONTUS, ST.

Merovingian monk of Lonray, Diocese of Bourges, France; d. c. 720. He has often been wrongly identified with a monk of the same name (commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on March 25) who was a hermit in Pistoia. The chief source for knowledge of Barontus is the Visio Baronti monachi Longoretensis, probably written by a contemporary. Barontus, after some years of married life, distributed his considerable possessions and entered the monastery of Saint-Pierre de Longoret in Lonray, together with his son, St. Desiderius. On March 25, 678, in the course of a violent fever, he had a vision which he later recounted. The fantastic journey through the other world recorded in the Visio witnesses to the eschatological curiosity of the time.

Feast: March 26 (Diocese of Bourges).

Bibliography: Acta Sanctorum March 3:565572. Visio, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum (Berlin 1826 ) 5:368394. j. coignet, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. a. baudrillart et al. (Paris 1912) 6:882885. g. raspini, Bibliotheca sanctorum 2:828829.

[j. e. lynch]