St. Lucian, Apostle of Beauvais, in France, Martyr


HE preached the gospel in Gaul, in the third century; came from Rome, and was probably one of the companions of St. Dionysius of Paris, or at least of St. Quintin. He sealed his mission with his blood at Beauvais, under Julian, vicar or successor to the bloody persecutor Rictius Varus, in the government of Gaul, about the year 290. Maximian, called by the common people Messien, and Julian, the companions of his labours, were crowned with martyrdom at the same place a little before him. His relics, with those of his two colleagues, were discovered in the seventh age, as St. Owen informs us in his life of St. Eligius. They are shown in three gilt shrines, in the abbey which bears his name, and was founded in the eighth century. Rabanus Maurus says, that these relics were famous for miracles in the ninth century.	1
St. Lucian is styled only martyr, in most calendars down to the sixteenth century, and in the Roman Martyrology, and the calendar of the English protestants, in all which it is presumed that he was only priest; but a calendar compiled in the reign of Lewis le debonnaire, 1 gives him the title of bishop, and he is honoured in that quality at Beauvais. See Bollandus, p. 640; though the two lives of this saint, published by him, and thought to be one of the ninth, the other of the tenth, age, are of little or no authority. Tillemont, T. 4. p. 537. Loisel and Louvet, Hist. de Beauvais, p. 76.	2

Note 1. Spicileg. T. 10. p. 130. [back]