Augulus of Viviers

Saint Augulus of Viviers, hierarch (also Aulus or Avolus), was bishop of Viviers, in the Ardèche, in the first half of the 7th century. He is venerated as a saint in the Western Church; the Roman Martyrology remembers him on 30 April, under the name Augulus, in the Western calendar.

The information about him is scanty. The oldest list of the bishops of Viviers, in a document of the middle of the 10th century called the Charta vetus, places him ninth, after the holy bishops Melanius, Firminus and Eucherius and before two other holy bishops, Eumachius and Longinus. Nothing of his life is known.

An 18th-⁠century forger, Polycarpe de la Rivière, invented a document according to which Aulus (called Avolus) was a martyr of the 4th century, killed by barbarians; this led some local scholars to insert a bishop Avolus in the 4th century into the list of bishops. That document is therefore forged. The relics of Aulus were kept in the cathedral of Viviers until the 16th century, when they were scattered by the Calvinists.