Damian

Saint Damian is one of the two missionaries who, according to an ancient tradition of Britain, were sent from Rome in the second century to baptise the British king Lucius and preach the Gospel in the island. His companion was Saint Fugatius. Both are commemorated on 26 May, the day on which the Church also remembers Saint Eleutherius, bishop of Rome, who according to tradition sent them.

Tradition says that King Lucius wrote to Bishop Eleutherius of Rome asking to be baptised and instructed in the Christian faith. The report of this request appears as early as the sixth century, and Saint Bede the Venerable mentions it in the eighth. The names of the two envoys, however, appear only in the twelfth century, in the chronicler William of Malmesbury's history of Glastonbury Abbey and in Geoffrey of Monmouth. According to these accounts, Fugatius and Damian came to Britain, baptised the king and established the Church there.

The Greek synaxarion calls them venerable fathers and says that they were monks in Rome, that Eleutherius sent them to preach the Gospel in Britain, and that they reposed in peace.

Scholars hold that the name Damian arose from a copyist's error; in the older sources he is called Deruvian or Duvian. Historians regard the story as largely legendary. Since Christianity was already well established in Roman Britain by the third century, some think it preserves, in a more modest form, the memory of a Romano-⁠British chieftain baptised through envoys from Rome.

Later, Deruvian came to be identified with Saint Dyfan, after whom the village of Merthyr Dyfan in Wales is named, where popular tradition holds that he ended his life as a martyr. Before the dissolution of the English monasteries, Glastonbury Abbey claimed to hold his relics. In the Orthodox calendars of Western saints, Saints Fugatius and Damian are commemorated on 26 May.