Saint Gatian, Bishop
  December 18th  

    According to St. Gregory of Tours St. Gatian was one of the six missionary bishops who came to Gaul from Rome with St. Dionysius of Paris about the middle of the third century. He preached the faith principally at Tours, of which church he is venerated as the founder and the first bishop. Having continued his labors with unwearied zeal amid many dangers for fifty years he died in peace. His memory was held in veneration, but it appears that much of his work was undone. A medieval legend says that St. Gatian was one of the seventy-two disciples and was sent to Gaul by St. Peter himself. This is certainly a fiction.

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St. Gregory of Tours mentions St. Gatian in his Historia Francorum, bk i, ch 10, and bk x, ch. 31, as also in his Gloria confessorum, bk iv, ch. 39. The fact that Gatian is not commemorated in the Hieronymianum suggests there was no very actice cultus, but we are told that St. Martin of Tours enshrined his relics with honor. Duchesne discusses the case of Gatian in his Fastes Épiscopaux, vol. ii, pp. 286, 302.

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Butler's Lives of The Saints, Herbert J. Thurston, S.J. and Donald Attwater Nihil Obstat: PATRICIVS MORRIS, S.T.D., L.S.S., CENSOR DEPVTATVS. Imprimatur: E. MORROGH BERNARD, VICARIVS GENERALIS WESTMONASTERII: DIE XXIII FEBRVARII MCMLIII