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St. Jodoc of Ponthieu

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Saints and feasts

St. Jodoc of Ponthieu

Confessor

Jodoc, also called Josse, chose priestly and solitary life instead of royal advancement. His hermitage in Picardy became the monastery of Saint-Josse-sur-Mer.

Sources

The life below remains the existing Butler-based reading, with its edition citation. The profile preserves the feast date and source title already listed in the library. Additional personal dates and historical details are shown only when separately documented.

Also called: Josse
Jodoc and Josse refer to the same priest and hermit in the notice.

Butler sourceAlban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XII (December), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; December 13, “St Jodoc or Josse, Confessor,” pp. 266-269.

Butler’s Lives of the Saints (1846)Alban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XII (December), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; December 13, “St Jodoc or Josse, Confessor,” pp. 266-269.

The reading

ⓘ Butler source

Alban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XII (December), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; December 13, “St Jodoc or Josse, Confessor,” pp. 266-269.

Jodoc, known in French as Josse, belonged to the ruling family of Brittany. Butler relates that he declined the crown offered to him and spent a period in prayer before choosing an ecclesiastical life. His decision led him away from the honours available in his own country.

In Picardy he received the protection of Haymo, duke of Ponthieu, and served as a priest before retiring with a companion to a hermitage. Prayer and cultivation of the land supported their life and supplied something for those in need. The account follows their successive dwellings and Jodoc’s pilgrimage to Rome.

The hermitage developed into the monastery known as Saint-Josse-sur-Mer. Butler remembers both his personal withdrawal from ambition and the community that survived him. This condensed reading retains the central account of his vocation while leaving the long genealogical discussion and the exact early royal chronology in the source.

Historical note

An original Novena Regina reading adapted and summarized from the cited pre-1962 source. This is not a transcription of Butler’s words.

Jodoc, Judoc and Josse are forms of the same name here. The source’s extended genealogy of the Breton rulers is not adopted as an independent conclusion.

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