Eutropius of Saintes

Saint Eutropius is venerated as the first bishop of Saintes in Gaul, today in France. According to tradition he was sent there to preach the Gospel. The Church remembers him on 30 April.

Little is known of him. Even the period of his episcopate is not known with certainty. Tradition says he was a Roman or a Persian of royal descent and was sent to Gaul either by Saint Clement in the first century or by Pope Fabian in the 250s, as a companion of Saint Denis. His coming to Gaul is also placed in the time of the emperor Decius (249 to 251). He lived as a hermit near Saintes and led to the faith the governor's daughter, Saint Eustella. It is said that the governor, enraged by his daughter's conversion, had them both killed. Eutropius was killed by an axe which split his head.

Saint Gregory of Tours mentions the tradition of his martyrdom, but says that until Bishop Palladius of Saintes moved his relics, around 590, into a church named for him, no one truly knew the legend of Eutropius. The poet Venantius Fortunatus also mentions him in connection with Saintes. He is also named as a martyr in In gloriam martyrum, written around 590. In the Middle Ages and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries many lives of him were written, full of late legends, including that he was a Persian king's son and even a thirteenth apostle, which has no historical basis. His tomb is preserved in the Basilica of Saint Eutropius in Saintes, the church dedicated to his veneration and one of the city's principal medieval religious monuments.