c. 630 – c. 676
Abbot of Lerins who, with four of his monks, was seized and martyred near Corsica — their tongues cut out and eyes plucked (c. 676)
The Holy Venerable-Martyr Aigulphus, Abbot of Lerins, and His Companions
Aigulphus (also rendered Aigulf, Ayoul, or Ayou) was a Frankish monk of the seventh century who became abbot of the island monastery of Lerins, off the southern coast of Gaul, and was put to death with four of his monks on an island near Corsica. He is commemorated on September 3 and is numbered among the pre-schism Western saints venerated as Orthodox.
By tradition he was born around 630 at Blois and, at about the age of twenty, entered the monastery of Fleury (the Abbey of St. Benedict on the Loire). From Fleury he was sent to Monte Cassino, which had been laid waste in the Lombard invasions, to recover the relics of Saints Benedict and Scholastica; the sources regard the success of that mission as uncertain.
In 671 Aigulphus was made abbot of Lerins, where he undertook a reform of the community and introduced a stricter monastic discipline associated with the Benedictine Rule. The severity of this reform provoked resistance, and the accounts relate that his conflict with opponents — in some tellings a local chieftain — led to his being seized together with four of his monks. They were carried off to an island near Corsica and there martyred, around the year 676.
Lerins had long been one of the foremost monastic centers of Gaul. The sources credit Aigulphus, after his appointment as abbot in 671, with introducing a more rigorous rule of life and restoring order and discipline to the community.
This severity is presented in the tradition as the immediate occasion of his death: the resistance it aroused, joined to a conflict with a local power, ended in the abbot's abduction along with a small group of his monks.
According to the Roman Martyrology, Aigulphus and his companions had their tongues cut out and their eyes plucked out before they were put to death by the sword. The place of their martyrdom is given as an island near Corsica, named in some sources as Capria, off the coast near Cannes.
One of the four monks martyred with him is named in the tradition as Frugentius. The group is commemorated together on September 3.