Agricius of Trier

Saint Agricius was the first historically attested bishop of Trier, in present-⁠day Germany, around 310 to 330. He is said to have been born around 260 and to have fallen asleep around 330 or 335. He is commemorated on 19 January. He is regarded as patron of the diocese of Trier and of builders, carpenters, blacksmiths and confectioners.

From Diocletian's administrative reorganization of the empire, Augusta Treverorum, now Trier, was the capital of Belgica Prima, the chief city of Gaul and often the residence of emperors. There were Christians there from the second century and probably in the third there was already a bishop at Trier, the oldest episcopal see in Germany. The first clearly attested bishop is Agricius, who took part in the Council of Arles in 314 and signed the acts immediately after the bishop there, which shows that Trier claimed, at least in the fourth century, primacy in Gaul and Germany, a claim his successor Saint Maximin reinforced.

Less is known for certain. Stories about him rest in part on Altmann's dubious Vita Helenae of about 850. According to an eleventh-⁠century tradition he was a priest, according to some sources even patriarch of Antioch, and was moved to the see of Trier by Pope Sylvester I at the request of Saint Helena the Empress. It is said he laboured zealously and successfully twenty years at the conversion of Gaul and western Germany, and brought back to Christianity the inhabitants who had returned to idols. Medieval tradition places in his time the building of the first cathedral of Trier, built, it is said, over Empress Helena's palace, which she gave for that purpose; she gave him part of the palace to be made a cathedral. In his time the first spiritual school is said to have been set up at Trier. Tradition says Helena gave him part of the Lord's robe, the Heiliger Rock, the seamless garment for which the soldiers cast lots, kept today at Trier, and that he also brought there the relics of the Apostle Matthias and the nails of the Holy Cross. Saint Athanasius, who came as an exile to Trier in 335 or 336, speaks of the multitude of faithful he found there and of the churches being built. In 1936, in excavations in the church of Saint Maximin, the sarcophagus now called the "Sarcophagus of Agricius" was found. In the miniature of Egbert of Trier, from 980, he is shown with a small beard and tonsure. He was succeeded by Saint Maximin.