Alphonsus of Embrun

Alphonsus was bishop of Embrun in Provence, from about 740 to about 770. He is regarded as a saint venerated locally in the Catholic Church. Our sources show no day of commemoration and no place for his relics.

His pastorate fell in one of the periods of the history of the diocese least lit by the sources. The main reason is the destruction of most of the documents in the repeated ravages of Provence by the Spanish Moors, from the eighth century to the first third of the tenth.

The main source about Alphonsus is the old diptychs of the diocese of Embrun, in which this bishop is named as successor of Vilichen and predecessor of Saint Marcellus. On the basis of these documents it is supposed that Alphonsus governed between 740 and 770. Church traditions link with the name of this bishop the first attack of the Moors on the territory of the diocese, following the Arab conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. Historians also note that the pastorate of Alphonsus fell in the time of the general decline of the dioceses of the Frankish state, caused by the secularization of church property carried out by the mayor of the palace Charles Martel. In the diptychs Alphonsus is called a saint, but the day of his commemoration is not given, and the place of his relics is not known.