Saint Prudent de Narbonne

Prudent de Narbonne (Latin: Prudentius, died c. 257) was a Christian deacon who was martyred in Narbonne in what is now France in the 3rd century. He is venerated by the Catholic Church as a saint. His relics are said to have effected various miracles. They were found in a church in Narbonne and taken to Bèze Abbey in 883. They were held for safe keeping during the Norman invasions in the cathedral of Saint-Étienne de Dijon, then returned to the abbey. Later they were restored to Narbonne, and are held in an elaborate reliquary in Narbonne Cathedral. Prudentius was a deacon who was martyred in Narbonne in the 3rd century. He came from a noble family of Narbonne and was raised as a Christian. He studied literature with great success, and was made a deacon. He may have been a victim of the persecution of Valerian in 257. A 19th-century biographer writes that he shone in the assembly of the faithful like the sun at noon by the brilliancy of his teaching and the sanctity of his life, which was shown by many miracles. This caused some people to hate him. They loaded him with chains, cruelly tortured him and broke his skull with a mason's hammer on 7 September 257. It is not recorded whether his murderers were barbarians or Roman soldiers. H.M. Duplus in his Vie des Saints du diocèse de Dijon (1866) relates that the Christians buried Prudentius in a sepulcher, but his enemies pulled the body out and exposed it to be devoured by the birds of prey and scavenging animals. However, God removed the animals and the Christians reburied the saint secretly. Later they put the holy relics in a tomb and raised a small church above it. This church was burned by the Saracens in the 8th century and its revenues given by Charles Martel (c. 686–741) to one of his soldiers. On 6 October 883 Geilon, bishop of Langres, gave Bèze Abbey the relics of Saint Prudent, which he had brought back after his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain.