thumb|Ivo portrayed by Rogier van der Weydenthumb|The relics of Saints Ivo and [[Tudwal|Tugdual in a procession at the gate of Tréguier's cathedral in 2005. In the reliquary is the skull of Saint Ivo]]
Saint
Ivo of Kermartin (
17 October 1253 –
19 May 1303), also known
Yvo or
Ives, as
Erwann (in
Breton) and as
Yves Hélory (also
Helori or
Heloury in
French), was a
parish priest among the poor of
Louannec, the only one of his station to be canonized in the
Middle Ages. He is the
patron of
Brittany,
lawyers, and abandoned children. His
feast day is
May 19. Poetically, he is referred to as "Advocate of the Poor."
Born at
Kermartin, a manor near
Tréguier in
Brittany, Ivo was the son of Helori, lord of Kermartin, and Azo du Kenquis. In 1267 Ivo was sent to the
University of Paris, where he graduated in
civil law. He went to
Orléans in 1277 to study
Canon law. On his return to Brittany having received minor orders he was appointed "official", the title given to an
ecclesiastical judge, of the archdeanery of
Rennes (1280); meanwhile he studied
Scripture, and there are strong reasons for believing that he joined the
Franciscan Tertiaries sometime later at
Guingamp. He was soon invited by the
Bishop of Tréguier to become his official, and accepted the offer in 1284. He displayed great zeal and rectitude in the discharge of his duty and did not hesitate to resist the unjust taxation of the king, which he considered an encroachment on the rights of the Church; by his charity he gained the title of
advocate and patron of the poor. Having been ordained he was appointed to the parish of Tredrez in 1285 and eight years later to Louannec, where he died of
natural causes, after a life of hard work and repeated
fasting. He was buried in Tréguier, and on his tomb was supposedly inscribed in Latin:
Sanctus Ivo erat Brito / Advocatus et non latro / Res miranda populo. Roughly translated, this means: "Saint Ivo was Breton / A lawyer and not a thief / A marvelous thing to the people." It is a
quip about the reputation lawyers have for thievery.
Ivo was
canonized in June 1347 by
Clement VI at the urging of
Philip I, Duke of Burgundy. At the inquest into his sanctity in 1331, many of his parishioners testified as to his goodness, that he preached regularly in both chapel and field, and that under him "the people of the land became twice as good as they had been before". The connexion between religion and good behaviour was especially stressed in his sermons and he is reported to have "chased immorality and sin from the village of Louannec". At the time he was believed to have been a
Franciscan tertiary. Shortly after 1362, the future saint
Jeanne-Marie de Maillé reported a vision of Yves (and an
ecstasy,
raptus), during which he told her, "If you are willing to abandon the world, you will taste here on earth the joys of heaven."
Ivo is often presented with a purse in his right hand (for all the money he gave to the poor during his life) and a rolled paper in the other hand (for his charge as a judge). Another popular representation of is Ivo between a rich man and a poor one. The churches of
Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza and
Sant'Ivo dei Bretoni in
Rome are dedicated to him.