Saint Gatianus of Tours

Gatianus (Catianus, Gatianus, Gratianus; French: Cassien, Gatien, Gratien) in the third century AD was the founding bishop of the see of Tours. He was one of the "seven apostles of Gaul" commissioned by Pope Fabian to evangelize in the region. According to Christian historians, during the consulship of the Emperor Decius and Vettius Gratus (250 AD), Pope Fabian sent out seven bishops from Rome to Gaul to preach the Gospel: Gatianus to Tours, Trophimus to Arles, Paul to Narbonne, Saturnin to Toulouse, Denis to Paris, Austromoine to Clermont, and Martial to Limoges. A community of Christians had already existed for many years in Lyon, where Irenaeus had been bishop. As with other founders of the seven Catholic churches of Gaul, especially Martial, Gatianus became confounded in later Christian mythology with the "seventy-two disciples of Christ", alleged to have been sent into Gaul during the first century, by Peter himself. Other details of his biography, while not as easily disprovable, are also largely legendary. Gregory of Tours, writing in the 6th century, is a more dependable source for the few biographical details concerning his predecessor. According to the Catholic historian Louis Duchesne (Christian Worship: Its Origin and Evolution), the traditions preserved at Tours furnished Gregory with only the name of Gatianus and perhaps the 50-year extent of his episcopacy; it was by comparison with a brief early biography of Saturninus of Toulouse (Passio S. Saturnini) that Gregory arrived at the date 250 for the beginning of Gatianus' ministry at Tours (History of the Franks, 1.30). There were few Christians in Tours at that time, and in one of the troubled years of his episcopate he is said for a time to have lain concealed in a cave on the banks of the Loire, at a spot where later rose the great Abbey of Marmoutier, and Gregory states that Gratianus would go into the city only when opportunities of preaching presented themselves.