Peregrine of Auxerre

Saint Peregrine the Hieromartyr is venerated as the first bishop of Auxerre in Gaul and builder of its first cathedral, who died a martyr around 261 or 304. The Church remembers him on 16 May.

A strong local tradition says he was a priest of Rome, sent by Pope Sixtus II to evangelize the region at the request of the Christians there. He preached at Marseille and Lyon and brought most of the inhabitants of Auxerre to Christianity. At Intaranum, now Entrains-⁠sur-⁠Nohain, he angered the governor when he called the people to abandon pagan idols, as the inhabitants were dedicating a new temple of Jupiter. The Martyrologium Hieronymianum says he was tortured and beheaded at vicus Baiacus, now Bouhy in Nièvre, in the persecution of Diocletian. With him suffered his lector Jovinian, the priest Marsus, the deacon Corcodomus and the subdeacon Jovian. Historians think he probably was not a bishop at all but a missionary sent to the villages, and that in the ninth century the churchmen of Auxerre made the local martyr their first bishop.

In the seventh century some of his relics were moved from Bouhy to the abbey of Saint-⁠Denis. Pope Leo III ordered the building at Rome, beside the Hospitale Francorum, of the church of San Pellegrino in Naumachia, dedicated to him, for French pilgrims. A street near it took the saint's name and later gave its name to the Porta San Pellegrino. In 1645, in work under the altar of the church of Bouhy, a human cranium was found, declared after investigation a relic of Peregrine and solemnly brought back to Auxerre.