Abel of Reims

Abel (fl. 744–747) served as the Bishop of Reims in Francia, now modern-day France. He has sometimes been venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church, particularly by the Bollandists.

Origins In the late 10th century, Folcuin wrote that Abel had been a monk in Lobbes Abbey (modern day Belgium) while Bishop Ermino (d. 737) served as abbot, and had been born in Ireland. In contrast Boniface, in a letter to a priest in the English kingdom of Mercia, insisted that Abel had in fact been born and raised in England. The modern historian Wilhelm Levison has suggested there were two individuals with the same name, but Eugen Ewig accepts the identification by Boniface as more accurate. If Folcuin's later testimony has any basis in reality, it may be that Abel, like his near contemporary Ecgberht (d. 729), had once visited Ireland and formed a close association.