Hieromartyr
Hieromartyr Leodegar of Autun
ок. 616 — †2 октября 679
Also known as: Леже (франц. форма имени)
Hieromartyr Leodegar of Autun — Bishop of Autun, drawn into the political struggle of the Frankish nobility against the all-powerful mayor of the palace Ebroin: blinded and mutilated by his order, after two years' imprisonment and a false accusation he was beheaded on October 2, 679.
Hieromartyr Leodegar (French: Léger) was born around 615-616 to Bodilon, Count of Poitiers and Paris, and St. Sigrada; his brother was St. Warinus. He was raised at the court of King Clotaire II in Paris, then studied under his maternal uncle, Bishop Desiderius of Poitiers, becoming his archdeacon.
Around 650 he took monastic vows and became abbot of the monastery of Saint-Maixent in Poitou, where he introduced Benedictine reforms. Around 656 he was summoned to the Neustrian court by the regent Queen Bathilde to help govern and educate her sons. Around 659/663, through the queen's influence, he was consecrated Bishop of Autun; in 661 he held a reform council, opposed Manichaeism, reorganized the clergy, and established shelters for the poor.
He became one of the leaders of the Burgundian nobility opposing the all-powerful Neustrian mayor of the palace, Ebroin, amid the turmoil following the death of King Clovis II. He initially supported King Childeric II but opposed his uncanonical marriage to his cousin Bilichild, for which he was exiled to Luxeuil. After Childeric II's assassination (675), Ebroin, having returned to power, besieged Autun; Leodegar surrendered to spare the city from destruction.
By Ebroin's order he was blinded (his eyes gouged out with an auger) and, according to several accounts, deprived of his tongue and lips; he spent two years imprisoned. Ebroin falsely accused him of instigating Childeric II's assassination; a church council stripped him of holy orders, after which he was exiled to Fécamp and finally beheaded in a forest near Sarcing (Artois) on October 2, 679, by sentence of a staged trial.
He is venerated as patron of those suffering from blindness and eye disease; in iconography he is depicted holding an auger — the instrument of his blinding.
His feast is kept on October 2.
IMPORTANT CORRECTIONS: category righteous→hieromartyr — the stub's own text already called him a "hieromartyr," contradicting the stated category. As a saint whose veneration developed in the Latin West and who is not part of the Russian Orthodox Church's main current calendar, his feast is kept on a fixed civil date without separate Old Style/New Style reckoning.