Burgundofara

Burgundofara (born , died between 643 and 675, ) also called Fara Her father was Agneric, a principal official at the court of Theodebert II, and her mother was Leodegonda. She had four siblings: St. Chagnold, who was a monk under the Irish missionary, Saint Columbanus, at the Luxeuil Abbey, St. Burgundofaro, who was the royal chancellor before becoming the bishop of Meaux, Faremoultiers was one of the first monasteries founded under Columbunus' direct influence and was one of the most distinguished monasteries in France. Historian Edward James agrees with McNamara, stating that after an illness from which she almost died, Burgundofara created a last will and testament to prevent her family from taking her lands after her death, adding that it "gives us a fascinating glimpse, and the only one that survives, into the sources of a Frankish woman's wealth in the seventh century". James goes on to describe the wealth of Burgundofara and her siblings; all but one of the properties she owned were devoted to her monastery, which was customary during this period for women who inherited wealth and property after their parents' deaths.

Jonas' vita recounts several events that occurred at Faremoutier. Eustasius appointed Burgundofara's brothers, Chagnold and Waldebert, to instruct her in the monastic rules she used at the monastery. According to McNamara, Jonas gave no details about Faremoutiers' "foundation or its way of life", although McNamara postulates that Burgundofara probably introduced her brother Waldebert's mixed monastic rule or a tailored one like Donatus of Besançon's. Faremoutier was a double monastery; both nuns and monks were present, although the monks did not hold prominent positions and seemed to serve in menial roles. Many of them were former serfs monasticized to perform manual labor for the nuns. Priests were unimportant there. She was buried near the altar of the church nearby, with her brother Burgundofaro present. She left all her property to the monastery, except for a share in a villa in Louvres, which she gave to her siblings in exchange for their agreement not to interfere with her bequest. Her feast day is December 7. She is the patron saint of eye afflictions. A few decades after her death, Majolus, the abbot of the monastery in Meaux, "removed her relics from the ground and exposed them for public veneration". Some of her relics are in the parish church at Faremoutiers and in Champeaux. In 2024, the Societa Santa Fara di Cinisi (Santa Fara Club), a social and religious organization in Sterling Heights, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, which was "dedicated to preserving and celebrating Italian heritage and culture", celebrated its 100th anniversary with a Mass, procession, and veneration of Burgundofara's relics. The relics were brought from Cinisi, Sicily, of which Burgundofara is the patron saint. A statue of her has stood in the Holy Family parish church in Sterling Heights, built in 1909 by Italian immigrants, for over 100 years.

According to Butler, "a great number of miracles have been wrought through her intercession". For example, Charlotte de Bret (b. 1595), the daughter of a financial officer in Paris, who became a nun at Faremoutier in 1609, lost her left eye when she was seven years old; in 1617, she lost her right eye and became blind. Specialists in Paris were consulted, but they said that her sight could never be restored, and the remedies to remove her pain extinguished all feeling in her eyeballs and adjacent nerves. In 1622, when Burgundofara's relics were removed from her shrine, de Bret kissed one of the bones and then applied it to both eyes. She immediately felt pain, even though she had no feeling in her eyes for over four years, and the lids were "immovably closed". Right after removing the relics from her eyes, a humor distilled from them; she begged that the relics be applied a second and then a third time. After the third time, her sight was restored, and she gained perfect sight. Her restored sight was confirmed by her surgeons and physicians, and affidavits were taken by the bishop of Meaux, John de la Chastre, who declared, based on the evidence, that her blindness had been cured. The abbess, Frances de la Chastre, and the nuns at the monastery issued a certificate supporting the decision, which also mentioned the cures of two other nuns ascribed to Burgundofara, including palsy and rheumatism. Butler also reported that Burgundofara is devoted in France, Sicily, Italy, and other countries.