Emilianus of Nantes

Saint Emilianus of Nantes (Émilien, Émiland) is venerated as a martyr, killed around 725 fighting the Saracens in Burgundy. No written records older than the sixteenth century survive, and no Bishop Émilien of Nantes is known; the legend probably rests on a real clash with the Saracens, who were then in the region, but it has been much embroidered.

According to the story, Émilien was Bishop of Nantes. Hearing that the Saracens had crossed the Pyrenees, he gathered the faithful and sailed up the Loire, past the Morvan, to Autun, which they were besieging. He led the fight at the head of his men, was victorious at first, but the tide turned and he fell; the Saracens cut off his head. He was buried in the village now called Saint-⁠Émiland. The oral tradition speaks of a warrior bishop called "Millan", who came from Brittany and was buried with his companions in stone coffins that fell from the sky; Jean Mabillon was struck in 1682 by the number of them in the local graveyard.

His veneration began in the sixteenth century, when a brotherhood was founded under his patronage, and in 1556 he appears in a missal. In the nineteenth century the Bishop of Nantes restored him to the diocesan calendar, and on 6 November 1859 his relics were taken to Nantes. He is invoked for headaches, kidney stones and hernias. He is a saint of the undivided Church, honoured locally.