St. Aurelian, Archbishop of Arles, Confessor

BEING promoted to that see in 546, he founded in that city a great monastery for monks, in which he was seconded by the munificence of king Childebert. He enriched the same with relics of the holy cross, St. Stephen, SS. Peter and Paul, St. John, St. James, St. Andrew, St. Gennesius, St. Symphorianus, St. Victor, St. Hilary, St. Martin, St. Cæsarius, &c. He compiled a rule for these monks, and another for the nunnery of St. Mary which he also built in the same city. Both these rules are extant in the code of St. Benedict of Anian, and in Le Cointe’s Annals. He mentions the commemoration of the faithful departed at the altar; and also of the living: in that of the saints he added in particular those martyrs and confessors whose relics that church was possessed of. The saint usually styles himself Aurelian the Sinner. He assisted at the council of Orleans in 549; and according to the inscription on his tomb in the chapel of St. Nizier in Lyons, died in that city on the 16th of June, 552, or, as the inscription runs, the eleventh year after the consulate of Justin the Younger, in 540. 1 He is commemorated on this day in the Roman Martyrology. See the Annals of Le Cointe, and Gallia Christ, t. 1, p. 537.

Note 1. In most other places, except at Lyons, we find that dates were then for some years taken from the consulate of Basil, who was alone consul in 541, and whose name stands the last in the Fasti of Roman consuls the year after Justin. Dionysius Exiguus, an abbot in Rome, highly commended by Cassiodorus, his contemporary, for his learning and piety, in his Paschal cycle, about the year 541, first began to date the years from the birth of Christ, which epoch is called the Christian era, and was everywhere introduced soon after the extinction of consulates. [back]

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