ST. LUCIAN APOSTLE OF BEAUVAIS, IN FRANCE
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, of 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 labors, 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.
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 honored in that quality at Beauvias. 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.