Achard of St. Victor

Achard of St. Victor, C.R.S.A., (ca. 1100–1172) was a canon regular, abbot of the great Abbey of St. Victor, Paris, and later Bishop of Avranches.

Achard is said by some authorities to have been of English extraction, by others to be of the noble Norman family of de Pertins of Domfront. He completed his studies at the monastery school of St. Victor, and entered the cloister there. On the death (1155) of the abbot, Gilduin, he was elected to fill the vacant post, at a time when the royal abbey was almost at the zenith of its glory and power.

Two years later the cathedral chapter of Séez, composed of canons regular, elected Achard as their bishop, and the choice was duly confirmed by Pope Adrian IV. But Henry II of England intervened and named his personal chaplain, Frogier, or Roger, to the office. However, subsequent relations between Achard and the Plantagenet king were quite cordial, and the abbot used his influence at the English Court to compel the royal treasurer, Richard of Ely, to disemburse for the benefit of the poor some moneys which he was unjustly detaining. His letter to Henry II on the matter is still extant.

When, in 1162, Achard was raised to the vacant See of Avranches, Henry made no objection to his consecration, and later that same year Bishop Achard stood as godfather to Henry's daughter, Eleanor, born at Domfront. But the French king, Louis VII, was by no means pleased to see such a shining light of the Parisian church pass over into Norman territory, as is evident from a letter he then addressed to the prior of St. Victor's. In 1163 Achard was in England assisting at the solemn translation of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey.

The chief monument of his ten years' episcopate was the Premonstratensian La Lucerne Abbey, the foundation stone of which he laid (1164) and where at his own request he was buried, with this simple inscription: Hic jacet Achardus episcopus cujus caritate ditata est paupertas nostra. His brethren of St. Victor's celebrated his memory in the following lines:

Hujus oliva domus, Anglorum gloria cleri

Jam dignus celesti luce foveri

Felix Achardus florens etate senile

Presul Abrincensis ex hoc signature ovili.

Not the least gem in Achard's crown is the memory of his unwavering friendship for Thomas Becket through the years. In the chronicles of St. Victor's, Achard is termed "Blessed".

One treatise (Latin original and eighteenth-century French translation) of Achard's is extant in the Bibliothèque Nationale. It is a long commentary or sermon on the Temptation of Christ in the wilderness, and in it Achard discusses seven degrees of self-renunciation, which he calls the seven deserts of the soul. Hauréau in his Histoire literaire du Maine, I, quotes several passages.