Saint Benignus of Dijon

Benignus of Dijon (French: Saint Bénigne) was a martyr honored as the patron saint and first herald of Christianity of Dijon, Burgundy (Roman Divio). His feast falls, with All Saints, on November 1; his name stands under this date in the Martyrology of St. Jerome. No particulars concerning the person and life of Benignus were known at Dijon. He may have been a missionary priest from Lyon, martyred at Epagny near Dijon. Johann Peter Kirsch says, "For some unknown reason his death is placed in the persecution under Aurelian (270-275)." According to Gregory of Tours, the common people reverenced his grave, but Gregory's great-grandfather, Saint Gregory, bishop of Langres (507–539/40), wished to put an end to this veneration, because he believed the grave to belong to a heathen. However, when he learned through a vision one night that the burial spot (in a large necropolis outside the Roman city) was in fact the previously overlooked grave of Benignus, the bishop had the tomb in which the sarcophagus lay restored, and he built a basilica over it. Saint Benignus' Abbey developed at the site and joined the Cluniac order. In the early eleventh century a larger church was built by its abbot William of Volpiano (died 1031). The abbey church built by Gregory of Langres was superseded by a Romanesque basilica, which collapsed in 1272 and was replaced by the present Dijon cathedral, dedicated to Benignus, where the shrine survived an earthquake in 1280 and the French Revolution. His purported sarcophagus can still be seen in the crypt. According to the sixth-century Passio Sancti Benigni, Benignus was a native of Smyrna. Polycarp of Smyrna had a vision of Saint Irenaeus, already dead, in response to which he sent Benignus, as well as two priests and a deacon, to preach the Gospel in Gaul. They were shipwrecked on Corsica but managed to make their way to Marseille. They made their way up the Rhone River and the Saône.