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, or 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. 540; 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.
Footnotes:
1. Spicileg. T. 10, p. 130.