USUARD. - A Benedictine of St-Germain-des-Près (Paris), author of a martyrology, d. about 875-77, on 13 January. Nothing is known of his origins. He was a professed religious in 838 when he signed a pact of prayers between his monastery and that of St Remigius of Reims.
Commissioned to search among the ruins of Valence, sacked by the Moors, for the body of St Vincent, the principal patron of St-Germain-des-Près, Usuard went to Spain in 858, furnished with letters of recommendation from Charles the Bald, but was able to bring back only the relics of the martyrs George, Aurelius and Natalia from Córdoba, which he deposited at Émants in the diocese of Sens, hoping in 863 to restore the monastery of St-Germain, abandoned after the Norman expedition of 856. The account of the journey to Spain was written by the monk Aymon: *De translatione ss. mart. Georgii* etc. (PL 115, 939-60).
Between 863 and 869, Charles the Bald commissioned Usuard to compile a martyrology that would remedy the gaps and defects of previous ones. In the dedicatory letter to the King (ed. E. Dümmler, in MGH. Ep. Kar. aevi. VI, pp. 192-193), he states that he made use of the Martyrologies of Jerome, that is (pseudo-Jerome), Bede, Florus of Lyon and some others whose names he does not specify. It has been established today that Ado’s collection was Usuard’s principal source. Yet his work displays a marked personal character: modifications in the order of the saints, reductions in hagiographical information, numerous additions, and adaptation of the whole to liturgical use. The new compilation of 875 spread rapidly beyond Benedictine monasteries, so much so that it replaced other liturgical martyrologies. The manuscript texts were multiplied, not without additions, reworkings and local adaptations; likewise the printed editions, from the princeps of Lübeck (1475) to those of G. B. du Sollier (Antwerp 1714), reprinted in *Acta SS. Iunii*, VI and VII and in PL 123, 599-992; 124, 9-860, and by Jacques Bouillart (Paris 1718). Usuard’s text served as the basis for subsequent editions of the *Martyrologium Romanum*, beginning with the official Roman edition of 1582 and 1584 made under Gregory XIII in accordance with the decrees of the Council of Trent.