Baring-Gould’s sources: Gallican and Benedictine Martyrologies. Authority A life written by Adso, Abbot of Moutier-en-Der; died 992.] S. Bercharius was bom in Aquitaine, of wealthy and noble parents, about A.D.626. In early childhood his gentleness, intelligence, and modesty attracted the attention of S. Nivard, archbishop of Rheims, when visiting his parents. S. Nivard urged his father to educate him for the Church, and this was done. When S. Bercharius was old enough to choose a course of life for himself, he went to S. Nivard at Rheims, who ordained him priest. He then studied the elements of monastic life under Remade, but not the saint of Maestricht, apparently; and then under S. Waldbert, at Luxeuil.

One day Bercharius was sent down into the cellar to draw a pot of beer. He had turned the tap, when he was called by the abbot. He forgot to close the tap, and ran in answer to the call. When he came back, the beer had not overflowed, but had frothed up over the top of the jug. That the very small beer of the monks should froth was indeed a miracle; it was remembered more than three hundred years after, when Adso wrote the life of the saint, who thinks the miracle scarcely second to the standing up of Jordan in a heap when the ark passed over.

When Bercharius was a proficient in monastic life he returned to S. Nivard, who wished to found some monasteries in his diocese. One day, as they were together on the way to Epemay, in quest of a suitable site for an abbey, they rested under a tree at Hautvilliers, and the old archbishop lay down to sleep with his head on the lap of Bercharius. Whilst he slept, Bercharius saw a white dove fluttering round the tree, and when Nivard awoke he told him what he had seen. These simple souls at once accepted the omen as signifying that the place was one where the Holy Spirit would love to rest, and there, accordingly, the monastery was founded by the munificence of S. Nivard, and S. Bercharius was constituted its first abbot.

Not long after, S. Nivard died, and his body was laid in the abbey church of Hautvilliers. S. Bercharius founded a nunnery at Puellemoutier, on the Loire, for eight captive girls whom he had redeemed from slavery. He erected also several oratories in the forest of Der, among others that of Louze. He also built an abbey at Moutier-enDer, and after his return from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he went to it, to spend in it, as its abbot, the rest of his days. There he closed his life by martyrdom. Among the monks was a young man named Dagwin, whom he had held over the font. He was probably a redeemed captive. In those days bishops and abbots ransomed slaves and turned them into monks or nuns, disposing of them as if they were their absolute masters, irrespective of the natural vocation of those whom they had bought. Dagwin chafed under his compulsory monastic life, and when sharply rebuked by the abbot for his disobedience to rule, resolved to murder his master. One night he entered his cell, and stabbed him. S. Ambrose [bishop of Milan (d. 397)] of Cahors.

Then running away, he flung the knife into the fishpond. But instead of sinking, the knife floated, and this so scared the murderer that he ran to the church and pulled the bells. The monks, wondering at the call at an unaccustomed hour, rose and went to the abbot They found him weltering in his blood. Dagwin was caught, and brought to his bedside. S. Bercharius pardoned him, imposing on him only the obligation to go to Rome. Dagwin departed, and, as the biographer dryly remarks, “ never came back again.” Two days after, S. Bercharius died (March 26), and was buried in the abbey church.

His relics [the bodily remains of a saint, or objects they used, kept with honor], nearly entire, are still preserved at Moutier-enDer.